The American Indian has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature.  He shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand.  Even when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization, he seems to sink and pine under it.  It has been so with the Mexicans.  Under the Spanish domination their numbers have silently melted away.  Their energies are broken.  They live under a better system of laws, a more assured tranquillity, a purer faith.  But all does not avail.  Their civilization was of the hardy character that belongs to the wilderness.  Their hardy virtues were all their own.  They refused to submit to European culture—­to be engrafted on a foreign stock.

Free!  Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free.  Freedom is the one purpose, wisely aimed at or unwisely, of all man’s struggles, toilings, and sufferings, in this earth.

I am persuaded that the Polynesians, from Hawaii to Tahiti, are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct, an instinct that had its expression in most of their customs and occupations.  Their dancing, their tattooing, their chanting, their religious rites, and even their warfare, had very visible elements of humor and joyousness.  They were essentially a happy people, full of dramatic feeling, emotional, and with a keen sense of the ridiculous.  The rule of the trader crushed all these native feelings.

To this restraint was added the burden of the effort to live.  With the entire Marquesan economic and social system disrupted, food was not so easily procurable, and they were driven to work by commands, taxes, fines, and the novel and killing incentives of rum and opium.  The whites taught the men to sell their lives, and the women to sell their charms.

Happiness and health were destroyed because the white man came here only to gratify his cupidity.  The priests could bring no inspiration sufficient to overcome the degradation caused by the traders.  The Marquesan saw that Jesus had small influence over their rulers.  Civilization lost its opportunity because it gave precept, but no example.

Even to-day, one white man in a valley sets the standard of sobriety, of kindness, and honor.  Jensen, the frank and handsome Dane who works for the Germans at Taka-Uka who was in the breadline in New York and swears he will never return to civilization, told me that when he kept a store in Hanamenu, near Atuona, to serve the bare handful of unexterminated tribesmen there, the people imitated him in everything, his clothes, his gestures, his least-studied actions.

“I was the only white.  I planted a fern in a box.  Every one came to my store and, feigning other reasons, asked for boxes.  Soon every paepae had its box of ferns.  I asked a man to snare four or five goats for me in the hills.  They were the first goats tethered or enclosed in the valley.  Within a week the mountains were harried for goats, and the village was noisy with their bleating.  I ate my goats; they ate theirs.  Not one was left.  When I forsook Hanamenu, the whole population moved with me.  Sure, I was decent to them, that was all.