Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/581

Rh points involved in this controversy, I have labored through the perusal of every volume, public document, report, and plea that I could bring within my reach upon either side of it. Had I stopped midway in that laborious process, I should probably have been more disposed than I am now to pronounce decided judgments and opinions concerning it; as I have noticed that many persons do, as the results of something less than a full survey of all the perplexities, the intricacies, and the inconsistent representations which grievously complicate the discussion. Nor is it only because the authorities to which one would be likely to defer are often strongly prejudiced and partisan in spirit; very often the essential facts in an important point or stage of an inquiry are as positively denied by one party as they are asserted by another. The leading principle of most service to an unbiassed and impartial inquirer is that which was set down in an early page of this volume, — that those who for different ends and purposes of their own have been brought into different relations with the Indians see them with very different eyes, and report and present them very differently.

In endeavoring to reach a perfectly candid and impartial view of the issue so warmly contested between the respective advocates of the policy of conducting the business of our Government, in its charge of the Indians, by the War Department or by a Peace Commission, we have to consider both the arguments and pleas advanced on either side, and the results of actual experiment. The War Department having had the charge of the Indian Bureau, the reasons which led to the transfer of its administration to the Department of the Interior may be stated as, in substance, the following: Our small national army has enough to do within its own special province, without being burdened with the charge of such responsible and complicated business as is found to be involved in our relations with the Indians. Neither the officers nor the men have special