The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-11-23
A Suicidal In dian Policy.

THE New York Times proposes what it doubt
less regards as a complete and satisfactory
solution of the vexatious Indian question.
''To make our westward course among the
poor aberiginies more easy, effective, and
credtable to ourselves" says the Times, eve
should use those Indian chiefs as our paid
officers, wearing our colors at the head of
their own native regiments, doing our work,
and becoming good citizens in process OF
time" The Times justifes this proposition
by a historical citation, and thinks our sue
cess would be as great as was that of Lord
Chatham, when he removed the discomfort OF
the Scottish Highlanders by taking them into
the British service, "plumes, tartans, and ALL
This parallel, however, we are inclined to
regard as a weak one. The difference between
the customs and national idiosyncracies of the
English and the Highlanders was compare
lively Insignificant, in comparison with that
which exists between the whites and the
Indians of this country. In Great Britain
national antipathy alone was to be overcome.
The Highlsnders, although not the gentlest
and most refined of people, were far from
being outthroats and horse-theves by instinct
and habit. 1t is not only an antipathy of races,
engendered and fostered by centuries of cruelty
and oppression, that We are required to over
come in our treatment Of the aboriginal tribes
of this country. Almost every attempt that
has been made, honestly and systemati-
cally, TO adapt the North American
has proved an utter failure. In
few struggling instances it has been success
full, but on such limited scale that the result
is of no moment. The pure blooded Indian
can not be civilized, in the mass, after the
fashion of the nineteenth century. At one
time it might have been possible, but the
unjust treatment to which the whole race has
been subjected at the hands of the whites,
taken in connection with their nomadic habits
and their antipathy to the restraining infu-
ences of civilized life, has rendered it imprac-
ticable, notwithstanding its great desirsbility,
both as guarantee of justice in the future
and reparation for wrongs inflicted in the
past.
The sooner this fact is recognized in all pro-
jected reforms of our Indian policy, the better
will it be for both races. The universal arm
ing of the Indian tribes might secure their
favor for a time, but SO soon as their real or
imaginary grievances should get the better of
their vain love Of show and intense passion
for pomp and parade, the old coEfict would be
resumed, on better footing, as far as the In
dians are concerned, than ever in the past. To
set loose upon the almost boundless
plains of the Far West whole regi-
ments of armed and disciplined (O
Indians would be the most suicidal
policy that could be adopted, as matters now
stand. An entire change in our Indian policy
is certainly needed the first step in which
should be the transfer of the Indian Bureau to
the War Department. This course would pu
an end to the wholesale robbery and oorrup.
tion which have 80 long disgraced the nation
in Its dealings with the tribes, and which has
been, and will remain, as long as it is per-
mitted to continue, the source of all the dis
content which prevails among them, as wsll as