New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-02-19
HOW TO CONQUER TIE INDIANS.

The time rapidly approaches when we must
adopt some new plan for managing the Indians
of the Plains-that is, if the massacres which
mark every MONTH week, and even every day
of the year, are to be suppressed. The neces-
sity for devising a remedy for the Indian diff
fculties is greater now than it has been in any
former period of our history, because with
large addition to our population, and with the
extension of two lines of railroad into the heart
of their hunting grounds, collisions between
the two races at many points, and often stimuli
taneOusly, are inevitable. That our troops have
learned to converge upon their villages, wit
great or even little loss, and shoot down or
scatter all who oppose, is so far from being a
remedy that every victory adds to the Indians
desperation. What this desperation has be-
come, and what is to be its character in the
| future, may be gathered from the circumstance,
| if we may trust the accounts, that in the bat
tie in the Valley of the Washita the women
and children mingled in the ight-for they were
armed and this was given as u reason why
such were put to death. 1t will be difficult
to find another instance in all our Indian wars
or, indeed in the wars of any other people,
civilized or savage-where the women and
children together had become in their despair
so desperate as actively to engage in repellng
an invader.
So gradually, in a comparative sense have
our encrOachments been made, that we do not
realize that we have now hcmmed the Indians
in. Our troops and settlements are upon the
Rio Grande; they are in New Mexico, in Ari
IONA, in Utah, Montana, Idaho Colorado, and
Dakota, and the heavy westward wave Of per-
manent immigration crowds from the southern
line of Kansas across the Smoky Hill and the
Platte to the Upper Missouri. Between this
frontier of eager immigrants and the protected
settlements of Colorado and Montana is n re-
giOn in some places less than 400 miles wide
and diminishing at the rate of, perhaps, half n
mile day, within which not only the Indians
but their only means of subsistence-the buff
falo-are inclosed. The crossing of this region
by the two railroads, and the stations and forts
necessary for protecting them, inevitably must
interrupt, and in the end stop, the semi-annual
migration of the buffalOes between the lanOs of
the South to the plains of British America In
deed even last year these causes operated to
such an extent that the semi-civized inhabit-
ants of the Red River country of the North
were unable to obtain their usual supplies; and
we had thence, III early Winter, piteOus
walls of famine from the half breeds and Can
adam vOyageurs of that remote country. Ac-
cOrdingly, the Indian of the Plains does, or he
is preparing to do, what every human being
under like circumstances must, and only can
do-tun and stand at bay.
A victory over the savages leads to settlement
only to the extent that they are annihilated,
for in no manner does it remove the causes
which melted them to robbery and murder,
since, after battle, the same causes still are
in operation, and they are unchanged, unless
in receiving new aggravations. For when the
food by which life is sustained is withdrawn,
no matter whether willfully or in the course of
progress and improvement, there can be no
peace, no redress, nor even what we agree in
calling human feelings, until the warrior, bis
children, and their mother can eat again. The
present policy leads to q continued renewal of
and to converging armies, and finally
to extinction; for there is no doubt that we
have, or can get, soldiers enough, and we have,
or we can borrow, money enough, by the help
OF which every man, woman, and child can be
destroyed. If this Is to be the settled policy
Of our Government, and such ii will be if the
advice OF Border mon is adopted, nothing fur
ther need % said, and We may wait with what