Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/538

518 characterize the lack of wisdom, of calm, methodical, judicious administration of Indian affairs by our Government; and we may use the most scorching invectives against many of the agents and agencies to which it has entrusted functions most outrageously abused, — but we can acquit our Government of all intentions of inhumanity.

That certainly has been a direful work which has been going on upon this continent during the period of our existence as a nation. A very dark catalogue of narratives — equally perhaps for either party — makes up the history of controversy and strife between the civilized and the barbarous races here. But none the less are we to distinguish amid the elements of the strife those which are to be referred to designed injustice and those which were incident to the inevitable complications of the problem. Our Government started under three most embarrassing and mischievous difficulties in its relations with the Indians; for none of them was it responsible, but each and all of them brought upon us an Indian war.

First, the sullen and grudging spirit in which Britain acknowledged the independence of her colonies led her to perpetuate an after strife and irritation against us. She retained for many years the Western posts which she had covenanted to surrender; she left her impoverished Indian allies unpaid on our hands, while nominally making them and their lands over to us as a part of our conquest and inheritance; and she continued in all our early troubles to ply and pay and arm the savages against us, in our frontier troubles. This entailed warfare was the hardest for us to bear, and we have not yet closed it.

Second, the Indians did not understand that they themselves were included in the close of warfare and in the terms of our peace with Great Britain. Dangerous neighbors were left us among them and the French in the Western territory, which the latter still retained. Our enemies kept up an open communication between Canada