Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/152

118 the Government entirely guiltless of the wrongs inflicted upon the Indians. It has, undoubtedly, sometimes lacked in vigor when Indian tribes needed protection. It has, in many cases, yielded too readily to the pressure of those who wanted to possess themselves of Indian lands. Still less would I justify some high-handed proceedings on the part of the Government in moving peaceable Indian tribes from place to place without their consent, trying to rectify old blunders by new acts of injustice. But I desire to point out that by far the larger part of our Indian troubles have sprung from the greedy encroachments of white men upon Indian lands, and that, hostilities being brought about in this manner, in which the Indians uniformly succumbed, old treaties and arrangements were overthrown to be supplanted by new ones of a similar character which eventually led to the

same results. In the light of events, the policy of assigning to the Indian tribes large tracts of land as permanent reservations, within the limits of which they might continue to roam at pleasure, with the expectation that they would never be disturbed thereon, appears as a grand mistake, a natural, perhaps even an unavoidable mistake in times gone by, but a mistake for all that, for that policy failed to take into account the inevitable pressure of rapidly and irresistibly advancing settlement and enterprise. While duly admitting and confessing the injustice done, we must understand the real nature of the difficulty if we mean to solve it.

No intelligent man will to-day for a moment entertain the belief that there is still a nook or corner of this country that has the least agricultural or mineral value in it, beyond the reach of progressive civilization. Districts which seemed to be remote wildernesses but a few years ago have been or are now being penetrated by railroads: Montana, Washington Territory, Idaho and New Mexico