The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-03-05

Can nothing be done for the American Indian
Is it proper and Chrstan-like to send missionaries
to Cochin China, to be sashed with knives, drawn,
quartered, and beheaded or to be stewed and
eaten by the cannibals of the Fiji islands-and is
it altogether beyond the reach of our philan-
thropy to do anything towards ameliorating the
condition of those fragments of once powerful
tribes that still claim to possess in peace, their
hunting grounds, in the West and North West?
We have no maudlin sensibility in this matter,
but we feel, nevertheless that common sense of
justice should lead us to respect alike, their weak
ness and their natural rights. Northern fanat-
les vehemently denounce the enslavement of the
negro, and make frequent appeals to public SYM
patty in behalf of "a man and a brother" but
who until recently, has thought it worth while
to agitate in favor of more generous treat
ment of that other imam and brother" the
poor Indian? Who has protested, with that
earnestness and vigor of language which the sub
ject demands, against the constant recurrence of
outrages committed by our borderers upon this
scattered and defenceless people? When has our
Government ever regarded the tribes that have
been goaded into taking up arms against the
whites, in any other light than that of aggressors
Theoretically, treatment has been generous
and humane; but practically, it has been alike
unjust partial, and inefficient. 1t is true that be-
fore removing them from their old hunting
grounds we purchased from them their lands, and
paid for them in cheap rifles, powder and ball,
blankets and annuities; but the national faith
was also pledged to guarantee them the peaceful
possession of the lands to which they were trans
ferred, and to protect them against all inroads
from the ''squatter sovereigns' of the border. In
no single instance have we strictly fulfilled this
most important part of our engagement. The
difficulties in the way of doing so were, I'M
doubtedly, many-for authority of any kind is
but lightly respected by that restless and energetic
but self-willed and INSCRIPTIONS class of men of
which our frontier population is chiefly composed.
Indeed, the popular idea concerning the Indians
is that they are fere nature, and may be shot
down wherever they are met with, not only with
out remorse, but with manifest propriety. Yet
the history of settlement upon this Continent proves
that if the native tribes did not possess the heroic
qualities ascribed to them by poets and romancers,
they had many of the peculiar virtues and butew of
the social vices that are common to more ad-
vanced stage of civilization If they have changed
for the worse in later years, the blame must rest,
at least in part, upon those whose example they
have initiated and through whose acts they have
become revengefnl and degraded. The conscious
ness that they have not been fairly dealt with,
gives force and pertinency to the movement which
is now foot to provide for their better treatment
in future. At the Annual Meeting of the "Ameri-
stcan Indian Aid Association ~ which was recently
held in New York city, memorial was drawn up,
for presentation 10 Congress, by Committee
appointed for that purpose. That memorial
sets forth the wanton spoliation and cruel
outrages that are being continually perpe-
trated by our frontersmen upon the border
tribes of Indians, and invokeS popular
sympathy in behalf of the sufferers. The Com
o;ttee cite a number of recent instances in which
parties of Indians have been wantonly massacred
without cause; and they also charge, that while
our Government virtually denies to the Indians the
right of sefprotection, it fails to exercise that
strict guardianship over them which it has volun-
tarily assumed. That almost every Indian war in
which we have been engaged, within the last half
century has been provoked by the reckless ferocity
of our frontier population is unfortunately a
proposition which cannot be justly disputed by any
one that has traced back those to their origin.
Senator THOMPSON, of Kentucky, in his discursive
speech on the "Thirty million bl'' stated, we
fear with but too much truth, that the American
borderer does not regard it as crime to murder
an Indian yet if the friends of the murdered savage
retaliate, by raid upon the settlements, the