Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/502

 was always meted out to those caught perpetuating the use of this debasing intoxicant, they in a drunken frenzy sallied out for the Sierra Madre. Lieutenant Britton Davis, Third Cavalry, under whose control the Chiricahuas were, telegraphed at once to General Crook, but the wires were working badly and the message was never delivered. Had the message reached Crook it is not likely that any trouble would have occurred, as he would have arranged the whole business in a moment. To quote his own words as given in the very report under discussion:

"It should not be expected that an Indian who has lived as a barbarian all his life will become an angel the moment he comes on a reservation and promises to behave himself, or that he has that strict sense of honor which a person should have who has had the advantage of civilization all his life, and the benefit of a moral training and character which has been transmitted to him through a long line of ancestors. It requires constant watching and knowledge of their character to keep them from going wrong. They are children in ignorance, not in innocence. I do not wish to be understood as in the least palliating their crimes, but I wish to say a word to stem the torrent of invective and abuse which has almost universally been indulged in against the whole Apache race. This is not strange on the frontier from a certain class of vampires who prey on the misfortunes of their fellow-men, and who live best and easiest in time of Indian troubles. With them peace kills the goose that lays the golden egg. Greed and avarice on the part of the whites—in other words, the almighty dollar—is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble."