Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-04
WHITE BARBARIANs AND RED sAvAGEs.

Chicago Globe: The conflict is disgraceful
episode of our 'ciyllization," is costly in blood
and money and wholly wrong to the Indians.
Kansas City Star: The present hostilities
in the Northwest are the legitimate outgrowth
of conditions which will continue to exist until
the Government adoprs an intelligent policy.
1t has been temporizing with this question for
hundred years, and has not yet hit upon
practical solution of it.
Chicago Neps: The loss of q few brave
soldiers in quelling an Indian outbreak, or in
protecting the lives and property of settlers,
may sit lightly on the consciences of those who
are responsible Tor Indian maladministration.
But the blood of every soldier sacrificed in
such ignoble warfare calls for retributive JUS
tice
Buffalo Express: That it was necessary for
the soldiers in order to defend themselves to
shoot the warriors was a misfortune: that the
women and children were also killed was
barbarous; that wounded Indian men and
women and babes too young to care for them
selves are left lying the battlefield to starve
and freeze is inhumaD. This is poor example
of white civilization to set the friendly
Indians.
Minneapolis Journal General Miles article
on the Indian policy of the Government
widely read. He shows conclusively that the
agency and reservation system must be
abolished as soon as practicable. so far, at
least. as the disturbing element among the reds
is concerned. The little army is called out to
deathful campaigns to punish Indians for re-
voting against shipshod kind OF civilian
management which ought not to be tolerated
an instant. The system is really more to blame
than the Indians.
Brooklyn Citizen: The trouble began when
the Indians were permitted to possess arms on
the reservations, and it eliminated when Sit
ting Bull was arrested and then Slain, and the
attempt was made to disarm Two Strikes
band. But it is too late to remedy the blunders
or to make recompense for the crimes of the
past. The Indians have been pursued into the
Bad Lands. and. as we have forseen from the
first, war has followed, and soldiers have been
wantonly murdered and men, women and chill
dren butchered among the Sioux in frenzy
born of present rage and past memories.
ST. Paul Pioneer-Press: And then, when we
have got so far is 1t too much to hope that we
might finally so progress in justice and decency
as to treat the Indian Just little as we would
treat the white manf Shall we coddle all these
fellows who have gone off into the gullies of
the Bad Lands, and fill them with beef and
cover them with blankets. while we let our
faithful allies starve as usual? Cannot this
great nation, in the intervals of leisure from
debates on the tariff and silver and the election
bill that is to do so much for the negro, con-
slider the possibility of keeping just few of its
solemn promises to the Indians?.
s. Paul Dispatch: The method finally
adopted for the arrest of Sitting Bull-which
of itself now appears to have been criminally
inexpedient-was hardly less foolish. 1t has
already provoked and produced endless blood
shed, and its latest result appears in the report
that 5000 Indians, heretofore peaceful enough,
have escaped from the agencies and taken to
the wapath. Unless such unhappy occurren-
ces are destined to become sporadic the Indian
must be reserved from the clu tches of the
thieves and vampires that have swarmed
around the Interior Department as the product
of spoils politics. and have consumed every
thing in sight that was intended for the use Of
the red man.