Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/292

 slap on the other, is to proclaim the teacher a fool and an unworthy person, in his opinion. To instruct him that it is criminal to deprive other people of their property, is to inform him that it is his duty to starve in order that his enemy may prosper. An endeavor to explain to him that he should forgive his enemies and harbor no feelings of vengeance for their assaults, would at once convict his instructor of such unmitigated nonsense as to forever debar him from all future consideration. The most that can be effected is to enforce his submission to superior power, which being accomplished, it should be our aim to exhibit that leniency to which he is a, stranger, and make a start from that point. This would be a practical demonstration enlisting his attention and homage, and specially contrasting, by acts, the teachings of one religion as compared with those of the other, or, more properly speaking, no religion at all. To inculcate just ideas of such important facts into the savage mind, it is necessary to practice as well as preach, and the practice must chaperon the preaching. But a discussion on this subject is so entirely foreign to the objects contemplated by the author, and so completely outside his sphere of remark, that it will be dropped for other and more practical considerations.

The Apaches entertain the greatest possible dread of our discoveries of mineral wealth in their country. They have had experience enough to assure them that the possession of lucre is the great incentive among us to stimulate what is termed "enterprise." They know and feel that wherever mineral wealth exists to such an extent as to render it available, the white man fastens upon it with ineradicable tenacity. The massacre of the pioneer set does not deter another company from experimenting in the same engaging field. These localities are always