The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-04
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indian AnnIrn.

entities in that quarter. Tms encouragement
is not due to any niggardliness, severity, disin-
oenuousness. or cruelty on the part OF the
Government: nor to any surliness, stupidity,
beastlness, or jealousy on the part of the
Indians. The Commissioners go from tribe to
tribe with their message of peace and
goodwill, unmolested, respected. They make
very handsome speeches; they are profuse and
apparently sincere in promises. If the Indians
will only be quiet; will move away to new
lands, where they need not fear the white men
nor the white men them; if they will
pursue agriculture and the arts of
peaoe will plant and reap, and gene
rally cultivate the tranquil fg-tree, they
shall have whatever they want-seeds,
utensils, farming implements, civilized cloth
ing, and apparatus for domestic life. The
Government will be their friend. The Indians,
after due silence and smoking, profess. the
most amiable sentiments. They are not noisy
or turbulent or queTulOus They will go and
look at the new reservations they will try on
the civilized coats and hats they will be very
glad to receive the ploughs and the shovels
they will do their best at tilling the ground
They honor their grandfather, and especially
General Harvey, who had beaten them and
taught them manners. Both sides are uneX-
ceptionably civil but nothing comes of it, and
nothing is likely to come of it. 1t is not in the
nature of things, perhaps, that anything should
come of it. A far better administration of pub
lie affairs in the West than we ever have had
would probably fail to work out such
solution of the troublesome problem as will
satisfy civilized, much less a Christian
people. The truth, as we gather it, seems to
be that the Indians have more cause to dread
peace than war. For peace to them means
banishment from their homes and favorite
hunting grounds, and settlement on other
lands, possibly as good, but in all probability
worse, in their estimate. It means adoption
of strange and uncongenial kind of life
uninteresting, dull, and deadening; it means
steady labor and thrift the use of unaccus-
toned implements, and the practice of un-
wonted manners. 1t means, besides all this,
exposure to the same rapacity that has
pursued and plundered them hitherto; it
means knavery of every description, injury,
contempt; it means the non-arrival of funds
appropriated for their benefit by the Govern
ment; the mysterious sinking of vessels
that bring them supplies, and the
consequent Withholding of the goods
as "damaged;' it means barter, in
which they always come off second best, and
oppression by lawless men, who will cast on
the Indians the blame of their own violence,
and then call in the aid of Government to
punish the savages for defending themselves
against their outrages. These are evils Of
which the Indians have had long and dire ex-
perience, and under which they have been
maddened past bearing.
War, on the other hand is no such dread
full thing to them. They are well mounted
and can all ride. They are well armed,
have ammunition, and are good shots They
fight when and as they please, compelling
the enemy to conform to their tactics.
They have no accoutrements to speak of.
They can come and go at a moments notice.
They require little food, and that slightly
prepared. The Indian wars have always
been more disastrous to their foes
than to them. The white men squander
treasure and life frightfully. Each Indian
slain costs about a thousand dollars and some
half-dozen soldiers; and the result is triflng.
No war has ever been crushing to them. The
white man must make peace at last. Besides,
until recently, Uncle Sans bark has been
worse than his bite. He has threatened so
much, and executed so little-bragged of the
hosts he would send, and sent so few-that
the shrewd red men may we'll doubt whether
his power is as great as he would have his
"children" think. All this may be very un-
reasonable but it is unhappily true. The
Government civilizers - teachers, farmers,
administrative not appeared; and, from
the nature of the case, cannot appear in con-
siderable numbers, and the Government troops
have not been formidable So that neither
has been tried with sufficient force to be
triumphant.
Experienced men say that the best conceiva-
BILE method of dealing with the Indians would
be to bring them within the precincts of civili-
cation, where they can be under the guardian
ship and restraint of law; where they will
neither mOlest nor be mOlested where theil
rowing prOpensities must be held in check by
social limits, and their rational humanity may
be stimulated by social influences, To be for
ever pushing them off into the wilderness il
simply to push of the whole question of theil
fate, and leave them indefinitely exposed K
precisely the same perils they incur a
present.
But two obstacles stand in the way of thi;
laudable and truly Christian proceeding. Firs
is the inveterate passion for the chase, and thu
ancient practice OF hunting their food instead
of cultivating it. From time immemoral tn,
Indian has lived on game. He must have hi
hunting grounds and hunting grounds mus
not only be aloof from the haunts Of men, bu
they must be wide of margin. Here and thert
a tribe takes reluctantly to agriculture, CLEAN
ing beggarly sustenance from halftilled soils
But agriculture is not natural to the savage
He must learn it from the beginning: and b
will not learn it well, The whole cause q
the present difficulty is the Pacific Railroad
which cuts through their hunting-grounds
and drives away their game. This inroad q
Iaborers and engineers they do not like. The
are not quarreisome; they are not unreasoaabi
on their principles; but their principles includ
bison The white men will come where th
bison happen to be; and they assail the whit
a