Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/582

562 qualifications for that business. Experience has proved that our army would need to be largely increased for any efficient management of Indian affairs; and this provision of a large standing army would be costly, and on many accounts highly objectionable. The war policy has been found vastly more costly and far less satisfactory than the peace policy, though the latter has been so far very burdensome and chargeable.

It was further urged that the tendency of the war policy is to perpetuate hostilities with the Indians, and the military management has always proved a failure. The killing of each single Indian has caused the sacrifice of twenty-five white men. The war with a few hundreds of Florida Indians, running through seven years, cost us the lives of one thousand five hundred of our soldiers and thirty millions of money. The method is inhuman and unchristian, as it aims to demoralize and destroy the whole Indian race, and is utterly inconsistent with all the objects and ends which a wise and just judgment should aim to pursue. The presence of military forces among the Indians always exasperates them, and sets them alike on the defensive and the offensive. The influence of a camp of soldiers, with stragglers and groups of natives hanging around it, is abominably corrupting, attended as it is with all forms of demoralization, drunkenness, and licentiousness, infecting the Indians with the worst vices and diseases of civilization. If we look to the military and to war measures in our future relations either with the semi-civilized, the subjugated, or the still wild tribes, we shall well-nigh bankrupt our treasury and commit ourselves to an endless series of fights. Such are the chief arguments which, when followed into details and specifications, presented most formidable objections to the exclusive management of the Indians by the war policy.

In thus setting down in plain and strong statements the objections which have found expression to a main reliance