The weekly Arizona miner., 1872-03-30
VINCENT COLYER AND HIS
 OFFICIAL. REPORT.
lFrom tho San FIsncIsco hltal

We have received a pamphlet CODY of the report of Vincent Colyer, submitted to Con- gress at the opening of the present session, and we have examined it with much care. It IS such document as we should have expect ed from a man entrusted with very grave public duty, and utterly incompetent to dis charge it properly. It gives us new evidence that he has neither comprehensive views nor administrative ability; and that his iudg- nent is as unsound in general matters as it was in proposing to make permanent peace with the Apaches by telling them to be good and giving them few presents, while he was travelling through Arizona with an aver age speed of thirty miles day. That speed without change of horses and over a moun- tanous country, where the roads were far from good, left him little time for diplomacy.
 We said at the time that if he could put an end to the hostlitics between the red and white men in Arizona, by such negotiations, Ss would be the most remarkable paciiicator of the age; but subsequent events have prov cd that the most remarkable feature of his conduct was its folly. While the Apaches were in open warfare with the people and government. because General Crook was about to whip them properly, Vincent Colyer, by falso representations, induced the Presi- dent to tie Crooks hands and let the Indian Commission beg for peace and practice their nonsense for six months. Colyer begins this report with the following passage
 "This report shows plainly that, according 10 the records of the Indian Department. the Apache lndans were the friends of the Americans when they first knew them: that they have always desired peace with them, and when placed upon Reservations in 1858 and 1859 were industrious, intelligent and made rapid progress in the arts of civilization; that their III will and constant war with the Mexicans arose from the fact that the Mexi- cans denied them any rights to the soil as original inhabitants and waged war of ex- termination against them; That the peace able relations of the Apaches with the Amer jeans continued until the latter adopted the Mexican theory of extermination," and by acts of inhuman treachery and cruelty made them our implacable foes; that this policy has resulted in war which in the last ten years has cost us thousand lives and over forty million of dollars, and the country is no quieter nor the Indians any nearer to ex- termination than they were at the time of the Gadsden purchase; that the present war will cost tho people of the United States be- tween three and four millions of dollars this year; these Indians still beg for peace, and all of them can be placed on Reservations and ted at an expense Of less than half a million of dollars year, without the loss of life. On representing these facts to the President, Commissioner Colyer was directed to proceed to Arizona and New Mexico, and there take suct measures as he deemed wisest, to locate those Apache Indians upon suitable reserva- fiapS faaA -l.,tha 4. them; and the President instructed the War Department to cooperate with the Commis- sioner."
 We denounce these statements as false. MT. Coiyer begins by referring to "the rec ords oi the Indian Department" as if they were complete and infallible. These records consist cn,eny ot the letters of Indian Agents, many ot them men of very questionable char. acter, and all of them interested in hanal;nc e much money as possible, War ruins their trsde and they do not like if Ii; fa,ss that the Apaches were ever friends of the Americans. Twenty years aro they were poorly armed and afraid of the Americans It is false that they have always desired peace IL is false that they have made rapid progress in the arts of civilization. The hostility be- tween the Mexicans and the Apaches began nearly two hundred years ago, and the Indian Department falsely pretends to explain the canse. It is false that the war between the Americans and the Apaches is to be charged to the former. There are very bad men on both sides. And finally it is false that these Indians still beg for peace. They are such brutes that they regard life without plsnder and murder ss neither pleasant not honorable They do want to be at peace with the sol dsen while enjoying the privilege of murder ing civilians and making raids into Mexico.
 Coiyers statement that we have lost 900
 ses and spent $40, ,000 900 in Apache war
 within ten years, are perhaps exagger-
 ~ but their truth would make his course
 nose hateful. It Is before an enemy who
 inaictsd such puniahment upon us that
 - 70 60 down on our marrow bones. The
 ne1eo, however we could bear. if it
 1u|f {n rood The ends at which