Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/580

560 same day, at points hundreds of miles distant, — interrupting mail-coaches, burning stations, destroying crops, fences, barns, and houses, driving off cattle, and murdering and scalping lonely travellers in the woods. All transit through the regions to be visited by the Peace Commissioners was perilous. Their dilemma was, that if they went without a military escort they would be slaughtered, while such an escort might thwart their peaceful errand. Fortunately they had authority to call for help on the commanders of posts, and on the superintendents and agents resident among the reservations under the Civil Commissioner. They had the security also — one much respected by Indians — of an armed steamer for carrying supplies. The Commission contrived to obtain some limited councils with the savages. They were smarting under the breach of our treaty covenants with them, and alleged that they were starving because of the scarcity of game and the withholding from them of the promised arms and ammunition. This first essay in the policy of attempting “to conquer by kindness” ended by a free distribution among the savages of the coveted arms and ammunition; with which those who regard with disgust and contempt this “Quaker” policy charge that the Indians at once equipped themselves afresh for their wild ravages on the frontiers.

The Peace Commissioners, at a meeting in Chicago in 1868, adopted a resolve advising Congress to restore the Indian Bureau to the War Department. This was directly in opposition to their judgment the year before. Thus has been opened the controversy, still so vigorously working, between philanthropy and war policy, — though by no means dividing all philanthropists or all military officers to either side upon it, — as to which of the two methods will be the more effective, or even the more humane.

With the purpose of possessing myself with all the means, in facts and arguments and tests of experiment for forming an instructed and candid opinion upon the main