Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/633

142 furnishing arms and ammunition for Indians to fight our army and murder our citizens.

"Of the results of this year's war we have no wish to speak. It is a heart-rending record of the slaughter of many of the bravest of our army. It has not only carried desolation and woe to hundreds of our own hearthstones, but has added to the cup of anguish which we have pressed to the lips of the Indian. We fear that when others shall examine it in the light of history, they will repeat the words of the officers who penned the report of 1868:—'The results of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that the war was useless and expensive.'

"We hardly know how to frame in words the feelings of shame and sorrow which fill our hearts as we recall the long record of the broken faith of our Government. It is made more sad, in that the rejoicings of our centennial year are mingled with the wail of sorrow of widows and orphans made by a needless Indian war, and that our Government has expended more money in this war than all the religious bodies of our country have spent in Indian missions since our existence as a nation.

"After long and careful examination we have no hesitation in recommending that it is wise to continue the humane policy inaugurated by President Grant. The great obstacle to its complete success is that no change has been made in the laws for the care of Indians. The Indian is left without the protection of law in person, or property, or life. He has no personal rights. He has no redress for wrongs inflicted by lawless violence. He may see his crops destroyed, his wife or child killed. His only redress is personal revenge. * * * In the Indian's wild state he has a rude government of chiefs and headmen, which is advisory in its character. When located upon reservations under the charge of a United States agent, this government is destroyed, and we give him nothing in its place.

"We are aware that many of our people think that the only solution of the Indian problem is in their extermination. We would remind such persons that there is only One who can exterminate. There are too many graves within our borders over which the grass has hardly grown, for us to forget that God is just. The Indian is a savage, but he is also a man. He is one of the few savage men who clearly recognize the existence of a Great Spirit. He believes in the immortality of the soul. He has