Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/577

Rh with, positively, effectively, and decidedly, — arbitrarily if so its wisdom dictates, but with the best lights of expediency, policy, and humanity. We have had enough of a fretting and an aimless experimenting continued through a century. All the conditions of the case now prompt to decisive action; for we have passed the stages of experiment. A wise Government in these days cannot be satisfied with either alternative in treating an uncivilized race on its frontiers, numbering less than one in one hundred and fifty of its white population, — as a fighting enemy or a hungry corps of paupers. Government has the power and the means to deal absolutely with the subject, and it now feels that it is under the obligation to dispose of it. And the possession of power by those to whom it rightfully belongs will always prompt magnanimity in its exercise. We no longer dread the Indians with the dismay which our ancestors felt about them, as near or distant. Their reduced and humbled condition demands of us forbearance, mercy, and even lavish benevolence.

Let us next look at the actual situation, with a view especially to its chief embarrassments.

1. We have shut ourselves, our citizens, out of large portions of several of our States and Territories, and of vast regions of our wild domain, which we have covenanted to Indian tribes “forever;” to Indian tribes, with an agreement to exclude the whites or to punish trespassers. Many of these reservations are encompassed by free territory and by stages of civilization. But both our Government and our citizens wish to enter, to traverse, and to occupy these cordoned regions; and we fret under our self-exclusion when railroad projects, mines, or emigration tempt us.

2. While we have shut ourselves out from, we have not really shut the Indians within, these reservations. We have assented in some cases to allow conditional roamings outside of them, for the chase and for hunting; and we cannot in other cases restrain the Indians from this roaming