Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/515

Rh all cases. Still, with largesses and other inducements offered, not only to British but to other peoples, the enterprise is full of promise. Settlers from Russia, companies of Memnonites, and others from Iceland, are in thrifty communities on the spot. The project of the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia is one which will task the funds of its proprietors. These enterprises will be found to bring British subjects into those more intimate and disturbing relations with the natives which have occasioned so many collisions between them and our people and Government. It remains to be seen if the British will prevail with a policy more just and pacific than our own. Certainly they have an opportunity to improve upon our methods and doings, and our experience may be a part of their practical discretion.

But whatever may be truthfully said about the greater wisdom or humanity of the official dealings of Great Britain with our Indians, the pages of authentic history are deeply stained for our mother country by the course pursued by her agents in the use they made of the savages alike in the war of the Revolution and in the war of 1812. At the outbreak of the former war England had already under her alliance and service nearly all the neighboring Indian tribes. Such of them as had previously aided the French, and as had been concerned in Pontiac's conspiracy, had been mostly won over or crushed. But the moment the colonies opened the rebellion Christian England, not content with the aid of mercenaries from the European continent, regarded every red man in our forests as fit and helpful material for a border warfare of burnings and massacres. And nearly all the tribes within reach of her call answered to it. It is difficult to trace, in her method of enlisting Indian allies and directing their savage instincts against her rebellious provinces, any feeling of humanity or any purpose of benefiting the natives. We certainly cannot at this point discern any greater consideration on her part