海倫‧亨特‧傑克遜
(HELEN HUNT JACKSON)

百年恥辱
A Century of Dishonor

在過去的三十年中，太平洋大陸架上的印第安人所遭受的欺凌、壓搾和殺戳……可怕得難以令人置信。

海倫‧ (費斯克‧)亨待‧傑克遜(1830─1885)出生在麻薩諸塞州的亞姆赫斯特。她長大成為一個普通的妻子和母親。她的父親於亞姆赫斯特大學教她學習拉丁文和哲學。她是埃米莉‧狄金森的鄰居和終身朋友。海倫小的時候 於易蔔斯威治和紐約讀私塾，1852年嫁給一個名叫愛德華‧B‧亨特的軍官。當她的丈夫被重新分配到外地時，她盡婦道隨他而去，並生下兩個兒子。其中的一個兒子幼年 夭折。婚後的第十一年，她的丈夫在一次事故中喪身，兩年以後，她的第二個兒子也死去。喪失親人以後，她開始為幾家雜誌寫詩和文章。1875年，她再嫁威廉‧S‧傑克遜，並定居於科羅拉多泉。由於聽了一次講座，她開始關心起印地安人的悲慘遭遇，並著手開展廣泛的調查研究，以揭露政府對印地安人所施行的苛政。她於1881年發表了《百年恥辱》，並將它分送給每個議員。以下為該文節選。

在這三百群(美國的)印地安人中，沒有一人不曾遭受政府或白人殖民者的殘酷欺壓。這些人越窮、越是沒有身份、越是無依無靠，就越有可能遭到他們一直遭受的這種殘酷欺 凌。生活在太平洋大陸架上的那些印地安人的情況尤其是這樣。他們突然發現自己被蜂擁而至的淘金殖民者團團包圍，活像岸上無可奈何的動物被捲入潮水一樣被他們吞沒。政府沒能夠來得及與殖民者們簽訂合約；甚至連公眾社會也沒能夠來得及制定有關的法律。在過去的30年中，太平洋大陸架上的印地安人所遭受的欺 凌、壓搾和殺戮可以編成一整部書，它可怕得令人難以置信。

然而，無論翻開印地安人歷史的哪一部分，其中的每一頁和每一年都可以見到斑斑血跡。發生在一個部落的事就是發生在全體印地安人身上的事，其中所不同的僅僅是時間和地點而已；而不同的時間和地點卻反映了相同的事實。科羅拉多州的今天就跟1880年的喬治亞州和1795年的俄亥俄州一樣貪得無厭並且無法無天。美國政府違背諾言，其手法不亞 於當年，手段越演越高明。

他們之所以這樣的一個主要原因是，人們討厭印地安人，不能容忍這塊「文明的絆腳石」的存在，以及懷疑他們的存在是一種潛在的危險的這種情緒普遍蔓延。那些充滿印地安戰爭恐怖情節的古老拓荒生活的故事經過兩三代人的傳說，使它在一般人的心裏產生一種似乎是遺傳下來的不容置疑又不可理喻的嫌惡本能，這種嫌惡幾乎到了不可消除或減緩的地步。

在印地安人方面有幾百頁無懈可擊的證詞，但毫無用處；它們被看成是感傷主義的東西和黨派的偏見而置之不理。一任接一任的總統委派一個又一個的委員會調查彙報印地安人的問題，並要求它們提出處理這些問題的最佳方案。他們的那些彙報都雄辯地描述了印地安人所遭受的 凌辱和政府方面的種種背信棄義；他們用最誠懇的語言建議試用簡單明瞭的權宜辦法，做到說實話、講信義、辦事公平合理。這些彙報被訂進了政府的年度報告，但僅此而已。在每一萬名美國公民中見到或聽說過這些彙報的人還不到一個，這樣說也許一點兒也不過分。然而，在全國的那些思維正常情感健全的男人們和女人們中間傳閱的每一份彙報，其本身就是一份「遊說公文」，它將引起一場革命，這樣的革命只有在印地安人得到現在尚不可能獲得的平冤昭雪之後才能平息下來。

格蘭特總統於1869年委派一個九人委員會代表六個主要州政府的權力和關懷到訪幾個不同的印地安人居留地「檢查有關印地安人的所有問題」。

在這個委員會的彙報中有這樣幾段話：「認為『印地安人不願意勞動』的斷言就像說白人不願意勞動一樣，純屬謊言。「經驗告訴印地安人他們的勞動產品明天將被白人搶走，可他們為什麼除了每日餬口以外還得種糧食、圍田地、建房屋和做其他的活呢?在同樣的情況下，最勤勞的白人也會變懶，而許多印地安人(那些委員們該更令人信服地說明是十三萬印地安人)都已經在勞動。這足以駁斥『印地安人不願意勞動』的這一論點。無情的事實是迴避不了的。

「政府與印地安人之間的關係史是一部記載不光彩的背信棄義的案卷；邊界白人與印地安人之間的關係史是一部記載多半是白人對印地安人的摧殘、蹂躪、掠奪和凌辱，以及偶爾印地安人的猛烈暴動和難以形容的野蠻行為的不堪入目的案卷。

「政府說過他們有權受人尊敬，而他們的這些權利卻一直遭到貪得無厭的白人的破壞，所以，他們本來該舉起來保護自己的手臂卻一直只能準備用來擋架別人的攻擊。

「有一些美國最高層軍官的證詞還記錄在案。其中大致上是說，在我們的每次印地安戰爭中幾乎毫無例外地是由白人首先挑起，而每一位研究這個問題的非軍方知名人士都證實了這一點，除了那些在未開發地區肆意搜刮而不受懲罰的強盜匪徒之外，還有一大批為了從戰爭中派來的軍隊和政府的經費開支中漁利的假冒正人君子，他們不擇一切權力手段挑起印地安戰爭。他們隨時用口頭或書面形式向印地安人報告死亡人數，而對死者是否有罪不作任何區別。他們激起社會最底層的人們犯下最不光彩的罪行，而且身為法官和陪審員，他們庇護這些人而使他們免遭他們所犯罪行應得的懲罰。白人對印地安人所犯下的每一個罪行都得到包庇和辯解；而印地安人對白人的每一點冒犯卻馬上被戴上事實上存在的或莫須有的罪名，通過報紙或電訊傳遍全國的各個角落。美國人民必須警惕這一類影響。

如果認為消除以往長期以來的損害和醫治精神上的創傷，糾正這個國家今後對印地安人的政策，並立刻保證印地安人的安全和幸福是一件很容易的事或只要通過某一個突然可能的立法原則就能得實現，那是一種草率而且愚昧的判斷錯誤。認為只要使所有的印地安人立刻成為美國公民便是醫治他們一切創傷和政府心病的靈丹妙藥的那種似乎被越來越多人接受的想法是極欠考慮的。如果突然讓所有粗俗或文明的印地安人一下子都變成完全的公民，那就像給他們所有的人同一種藥而不考慮他們不同的症狀和需要那樣是一個荒唐的錯誤。受它傷害的人要比被它治好的人更多。然而，1857年調查印地安人問題的一位負責人所做的具體分析是沒有錯的：「只要他們還不是美國公民，他們所擁有的財產權就無法保證不受侵犯。既然聯邦法庭的大門是向他們連同受他們監護和贍養的人緊閉著，那麼他們就只能行使自由政府的部分權利，或只好把那種足以使他們受到尊敬的尊嚴交給制定、行使並解釋少有的幾條法律的那些人。在他們繼續單獨地檢驗合眾國桌上掉下的麵包屑的時候，遊手好閒、浪費、負債將成為司空見慣，而勤勞、節儉和不欠債的現象將成為鳳毛麟角。他們對土地完全沒有擁有權，這使他們每個人都失去了勞動與奮鬥的主要動力──一個民族的財富賴以存在的主要動因。」

一切為了保證他們的安全和出路的審慎的規劃和措施都必須包含使他們儘早成為公民的各項條例，而且必須在此之前保護他們的第一項權利，尤其是我們的法律藉以保護其他那些非公民「人們」的權利。

在某一階層人的心裏存在一種討厭反對橫行霸道的傾向，它不適應於迅速嚴厲的除惡大計。這種傾向是說不通的。當一個新國家的拓荒者們發現有一片有毒的沼澤荒野需要開墾的時候，他們在清楚地看到條條道路該通往何處、清新的泉水該從哪裡冒出、還有在這片開墾出來的土地上最好種哪些莊稼之前，決不會放下手中燒荒的火和劈山的斧。他們首先清理沼澤地。因此，在我們國家的這個影響極壞而又十分棘手的問題上，也讓我們首先來「清理這片沼澤地」。

無論我們在這麼晚的時候在處理類似替印地安人伸張正義這樣的每一項計劃的細節中會遇到多麼複雜和困難的問題，無論優秀的政治家和善良的人們對該做的那些事情要達成統一的認識有多麼大的困難，但是，就哪些事不該做，以及在採取第一批步驟為目前，我們印地安人的情況平冤昭雪、醫治創傷和雪洗恥辱之前，哪些事不該繼續做下去的問題上，肯定不存在，而且也不應該存在任何困惑和任何困難。欺騙、掠奪、違背諾言－－這三件事明顯不能再繼續下去了。還有一件事是拒絕給予印地安人財產權、「生命權、自由權及追求幸福的權利」的法律上的保障。

只有當這四件事不再繼續下去以後，時間、治國之才、博愛精神、基督教義才能慢慢準確無誤地做好其餘的事。在這四件事完全停止下來之前，治國之才和博愛精神同樣是徒勞無功的，甚至基督教的作用也將是微乎其微的。

There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians [in the United States] one which has not suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of white settlers. The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the band, the more certain the cruelty and outrage to which they have been subjected. This is especially true of the bands on the Pacific slopes. These Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up in the great influx of gold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a tidal wave. There was not time for the Government to make treaties; not even time for communities to make laws. The tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the murders of the Pacific-slope Indians in the last thirty years would be a volume by itself, and is too monstrous to be believed.

    It makes little difference, however, where one opens the record of the history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain. The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by differences of time and place; but neither time nor place makes any difference in the main facts. Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and Ohio in 1795; and the United States Government breaks promises now as deftly as then, and with added ingenuity from long practice.

    One of its strongest supports in so doing is the wide-spread sentiment among the people of dislike to the Indian, of impatience with his presence as a "barrier to civilization," and distrust of it as a possible danger. The old tales of the frontier life, with its horrors of Indian warfare, have gradually, by two or three generations' telling, produced in the average mind something like an hereditary instinct of unquestioning and unreasoning aversion which it is almost impossible to dislodge or soften.

    There are hundreds of pages of unimpeachable testimony on the side of the Indian; but it goes for nothing, is set down as sentimentalism or partisanship, tossed aside and forgotten.

    President after president has appointed commission after commission to inquire into and report upon Indian affairs, and to make suggestions as to the best methods of managing them. The reports are filled with eloquent statements of wrongs done to the Indians, of perfidies on the part of the Government; they counsel, as earnestly as words can, a trial of the simple and unperplexing expedients of telling truth, keeping promises, making fair bargains, dealing justly in all ways and all things. These reports are bound up with the Government's Annual Reports, and that is the end of them. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that not one American citizen out of ten thousand ever sees them or knows that they exist, and yet any one of them, circulated throughout the country, read by the right-thinking, right-feeling men and women of this land, would be of itself a "campaign document" that would initiate a revolution which would not subside until the Indians' wrongs were, so far as is now left possible, righted.

    In 1869 President Grant appointed a commission of nine men, representing the influence and philanthropy of six leading States, to visit the different Indian reservations, and to "examine all matters appertaining to Indian affairs."

    In the report of this commission are such paragraphs as the following: "To assert that 'the Indian will not work' is as true as it would be to say that the white man will not work.

    'Why should the Indian be expected to plant corn, fence lands, build houses, or do anything but get food from day to day, when experience has taught him that the product of his labor will be seized by the white man to-morrow? The most industrious white man would become a drone under similar circumstances. Nevertheless, many of the Indians" (the commissioners might more forcibly have said 130,000 of the Indians) "are already at work, and furnish ample refutation of the assertion that 'the Indian will not work.' There is no escape from the inexorable logic of facts.

    "The history of the Government connections with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises. The history of the border, white man's connection with the Indians is a sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs committed by the former, as the rule, and occasional savage outbreaks and unspeakably barbarous deeds of retaliation by the latter, as the exception.

    "Taught by the Government that they had rights entitled to respect, when those rights have been assailed by the rapacity of the white man, the arm which should have been raised to protect them has ever been ready to sustain the aggressor.

    "The testimony of some of the highest military officers of the United States is on record to the effect that, in our Indian wars, almost without exception, the first aggressions have been made by the white man, and the assertion is supported by every civilian of reputation who has studied the subject. In addition to the class of robbers and outlaws who find impunity in their nefarious pursuits on the frontiers, there is a large class of professedly reputable men who use every means in their power to bring on Indian wars for the sake of the profit to be realized from the presence of troops and the expenditures of Government funds in their midst. They proclaim death to the Indians at all times in words and publications, making no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. They irate the lowest class of men to the perpetration of the darkest deeds against their victims, and as judges and jurymen shield them from the justice due to their crimes. Every crime committed by a white man against an Indian is concealed or palliated. Every offence committed by an Indian against a white man is borne on the wings of the post or the telegraph to the remotest corner of the land, clothed with all the horrors which the reality or imagination can throw around it. Against such influences as these the people of the United States need to be warned."

   To assume that it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke of legislative policy possible, to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past, set the Indian policy of the country right for the future, and make the Indians at once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and uninformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply to make all Indians at once citizens of the United States would be a sovereign and instantaneous panacea for all their ills and all the Government's perplexities, is a very inconsiderate one. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden, all round, to all Indians, barbarous and civilized alike, would be as grotesque a blunder as to dose them all round with any one medicine, irrespective of the symptoms and needs of their diseases. It would kill more than it would cure. Nevertheless, it is true, as was well stated by one of the superintendents of Indian Affairs in 1857, that, "so long as they are not citizens of the United States, their rights of property' must remain insecure against invasion. The doors of the federal tribunals being barred against them while wards and dependents, they can only partially exercise the rights of free government, or give to those who make, execute, and construe the few laws they are allowed to enact, dignity sufficient to make them respectable. While they continue individually to gather the crumbs that fall from the table of the United States, idleness, improvidence, and indebtedness will be the rule, and industry, thrift, and freedom from debt the exception. The utter absence of individual title to particular lands deprives every one among them of the chief incentive to labor and exertion－the very mainspring on which the prosperity of a people depends."

    All judicious plans and measures for their safety and salvation must embody provisions for their becoming citizens as fast as they are fit, and must protect them till then in every right and particular in which our laws protect other "persons" who are not citizens.

    There is a disposition in a certain class of minds to be impatient with any protestation against wrong which is unaccompanied or unprepared with a quick and exact scheme of remedy. This is illogical. When pioneers in a new country find a tract of poisonous and swampy wilderness to be reclaimed, they do not withhold their hands from fire and axe till they see clearly which wav roads should run, where good water will spring, and what crops will best grow on the redeemed land. They first clear the swamp. So with this poisonous and baffling part of the domain of our national affairs－let us first "clear the swamp."

    However great perplexity and difficulty there may be in the details of any and every plan possible for doing at this late day anything like justice to the Indian, however hard it may be for good statesmen and good men to agree upon the things that ought to be done, there certainly is, or ought to he, no perplexity' whatever, no difficulty whatever, in agreeing upon certain things that ought not to be done, and which must cease to be done before the first steps can be taken toward righting the wrongs, curing the ills and wiping out the disgrace to us of the present condition of our Indians.

    Cheating, robbing, breaking promises－these three are clearly things which must cease to be done. One more thing, also, and that is the refusal of the protection of the law to the Indian's rights of property, "of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

    When these four things have ceased to be done, time, statesmanship, philanthropy, and (Christianity can slowly and surely do the rest. Till these four things have ceased to be done, statesmanship and philanthropy alike must work in vain. and even Christianity can reap but small harvest.