Our Indian Affairs [pp. 5-22]

OUR INDIAN AFFAIRS.
enough "for presents on the most liberal scale for one hundred
years."
It is, however, the living questions of the hour that must now
engage public attention. Among these, incredible as it may
seem, we meet the idea of extermination; flippant speakers and
writers rejoice over "the dead Indian" as their type of perfection;
more earnest men wish they were "out of the way;" others still
would fold their hands and "let them pass away;" covetous men
want their land, and do not care by what means its possession
can be secured; many who would do them no harm yet regard
them only as objects of fear and aversion. All these shades of
opinion end in a common result-the extinction of the Indian
race. It must be owned that some things seem to justify this
direful theory. The wild Indians are mostly savages, cruel,
treacherous,-people whose vicinity awakens only feelings of apprehension and even terror. They, and far too many of the halfsettled tribes, are most undesirable neighbors, idle, lazy, thievish,
dirty, every way disagreeable-the furthest removed from "the
noble red men" of our writers of romance. Nevertheless, they
are men of like passions with us, capable of improvement, and of
living a Christian life. As to "killing them off," or "shooting
them down like wolves," we have not so learnt the lesson of
humanity, to say nothing of religion. We are a civilized people.
We do not sanction murder, violence, nor inhumanity. We cannot adopt even the policy of doing nothing, letting them pass
away, only punishing them for acts of violence against white
people-a part of the theory of extermination, a policy worthy
of him who asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?" This method
does not meet the exigencies of the case. It does not save the
lives of our own people, nor protect our advancing railroads,
nor make the wilderness to become a fruitful field; it does not
make friends and fellow-citizens of those who are capable of becoming intelligent, industrious, well-ordered Christian people.
As a means to this end, we can no longer adopt the theory of
regarding the Indian tribes as foreign or independent powers,
with whom our Government should form treaties. Whatever may
have been expedient at the beginning of this century, it is not
now best, either for the Indians or for ourselves, to conduct our
intercourse with them upon this idea; though we should certainly fulfil all the engagements we have made with them by
10
[January,