Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/542

522 contact with the whites, and have not actually been killed by them, have received from them many appreciable additions to their resources and comforts. The quantities of goods, of useful and desirable articles, that the Indians have been most greedy to receive, which have been carried into their country and distributed among them, are enormous. In fact, for more than an hundred and fifty years the Indians have come to be more and more dependent upon clothing, utensils, and food furnished by the white men. Edged tools, the axe, the knife, the hoe, the spade, cooking utensils, even the single article of matches, all to be used in peaceful ways, have vastly helped to the comfort of the Indian. As the game has diminished in many vast regions of space, the Indians, who had largely depended upon the old fur-trappers and traders, have come to be suppliants to the generosity of our Government. Indeed, our soldiers now have to meet their red foes armed with the very-best weapons and ammunition which our armories and arsenals can supply. I have made an approximate estimate, from a wide examination of Government documents and accounts, of the outlay of money and supplies from the national treasury for help of various kinds for the Indians. But I refrain for two reasons from setting down the gross sum in dollars and cents. For, first, the accounts are perplexed by interest on annuity funds, and by reconsideration of some sums once pledged, as well by various special grants on emergencies. And, second, it being understood that large portions of these treasury benefices are scattered by waste and fraudulent agents, while the proximate amount of the largesses would indicate the generosity of the Government, it would not be the real measure of the good secured to the Indians. More to the point is the reminder that all this outlay in money and goods — spent for the service of wild, restless, lazy hordes, roaming over immense extents of territory which they claim as their heritage, but do not improve — is drawn by taxation from the thrift,