Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/156

122 them on. The watchfulness of the Government will, in the long run, be unavailing to prevent collisions. The Indians will retaliate. Settlers' cabins will be burned and blood will flow. The conflict once brought on, the white man and the red man will stand against one another, and, in spite of all its good intentions and its sense of justice, the forces of the Government will find themselves engaged on the side of the white man. The Indians will be hunted down at whatever cost. It will simply be a repetition of the old story, and that old story will be eventually repeated whenever there is a large and valuable Indian reservation surrounded by white settlements. Unjust, disgraceful, as this may be, it is not only probable, but almost inevitable. The extension of our railroad system will only accelerate the catastrophe.

We are frequently told that the management of Indian affairs in Canada has been more successful than ours in avoiding such conflicts. This appears to be true. But, while giving credit to the Canadian authorities for the superiority of their management in some respects, we must not forget that they are working under conditions far less difficult. The number of their Indians is much less, and their unoccupied territory much larger. They have still what may be called an Indian frontier—the white men on one side of the line and the Indians on the other, with vast hunting-grounds visited only by the trapper and fur-trader. Their agricultural settlements advance with far less rapidity than ours. There is far less opportunity for encroachment. When in the British possessions agricultural and mining enterprise spreads with the same energy and eagerness as in the United States, when railroads penetrate their Indian country, when all that is valuable in it becomes thus accessible and tempting to the greed of white men, when game becomes scarce and ceases to furnish sufficient sustenance