The weekly Arizona miner., 1870-04-16
About the Killing of Indian Women

Tie expedition of Colonel Baker against tie murdering Piegan Indians, and its resuls, have created an unusual amount of discus ! sion through the Press, by the public, ard | ever in Congress The act of killing men by | the hundred, or even singly, is one of shud- | dering effect upon people at distance, esps- | cially when they hear of it with all the exag gerations usually accompanying it. And when it is reported that women as well as men have been slain although in the heat of battle, it is natural that the public, ignorant as it is, and persists in being respecting the character of Indian women, should raise an immense howl, as it bas done Colonel Baker has been mathematical, and so have his men, General Sherman, and as many more as could be wrung into the oflense. Now we do not | believe that brave men like Baker and those he commanded, and Sheridan, also, would unnecessarily kill Indian women, children, or men, eyen But the public and the Press ought to know, and might know, that the squaws are worse than the men, more cruel, more malignant. They fight when their | camps are attacked. as in the affair of Colonel Baker, with all the courage and savage fury of the men. When Black Kettle Owe think it was-was attacked and killed in his encampment by Custar's troops, the women were as formidable and desperate in their assaults upon our forces, as were the "bucks" This chivalry toward the women is in the main all right, proper and commendable. But let any one of these newspaper men, or mem- bers of Congress, ay, or our own women, be placed in the midst of an Indian campn time of battle, and an Indian squaw attack them with spear or scalping knife, where would this chivalry be then Is there man who reads this who would not, if he could, save his own life at the expense of the squaw's2 7 If he would not, we are inclined to think that the squaw were the better man of the two. In the midst of such fight, such a hand-to-hand encounter, in which Indian men, women, and children all took part, we should like to know how the women and children could be separated from the men and made secure against bullets. And further, why should they, why should woman, one of that murderous crowd, with weapons in her hands and using them in killing or try ing to kill our troops, be held exempt from the penaltyl That old Puritan who, in the early days of New England, seized a torch
 in the heat of just such another attack upon the Indians, and sung out, "We must burn them" and did so. has always been crowed over by our chronicers as hero. And those Indians were Christian saints compared with those that Colonel Bakers forces attacked. General Sheridan says that, to. his certain knowledge, more than eight hundred whites
 have been killed by the Indians within the the past four years, many of them muti)ated in the most shocking and horrible manner.
 And this tribe which Col. Baker punished
 was the worst of all the murdering bands How happens it that all this sympathy is ex- pended upon the Indians, and none seems to i be, or to have been felt for the white people
 men, women and chidren-whom they have
 slair by thousands, and many of whom, es- pecially the women, were shockingly treated abused, mutiiated before death The fact Is, , that the thieving Indian Ring" in order to keep the Indian as their stock in trade for
 defgaudug both the Government and the
 Indians, has seized this opportunity for an assault upon the policy of military suppres- : sion, for the horrible Indian outrages, and a sickly sentlmentality of many of our people
 has furnished fine field for their operations We feed and clothe the Indians, and they go
 out from our feasts and big talks full of our
 beef and clad in our blankets, and massacre
 every white person they meet. We hear nc T sympathy expressed for these our own peo- | pie, by these very scribblers and Congres. sional spouters, who overflow with lack-a daisy agony, because some murdering, mutil atng squaw gets killed while she is trying te kill.-Saa Francisco Call.