Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/253

Rh method for realizing the conviction. The last Report of the United States Commissioner for Indian Affairs (1881) is emphatic on this point. He says: —

Anticipating a matter which will demand our deliberate notice farther on, the Commissioner adds, that, as we cannot expect the Indians to abandon their own and to adopt our habits of life while we carry victuals and clothes to their reservations, we must compel them to work for a subsistence as we ourselves do.

Happily for all who desire to view this momentous and profoundly interesting question with the utmost candor and intelligence, not forgetful of all humane sentiments, the question is not one that concerns merely the long or the recent past in our country. On the contrary the right, the just, the wise, the expedient, the best possible way in which the civilized whites as a people, and through their government, can and ought to deal with the original, native, and savage occupants of our territory is one of the most living and exciting and serious questions of our day. The perplexing issues on the trial of which we have had two and a half centuries of practical experience have never been settled, and are open to-day. This experience seems to have made us no wiser; it has not introduced any essentially new elements for our guidance, nor relieved the sadness and the suffering and the injustice which