Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/595

Rh with the Indians, many of them when hard pressed will find a refuge, a breathing spell, and — we may as well speak out what we know — aid and comfort on the other side of the geometrical boundary line. There they will recruit; and thence, at their pleasure, they will renew their raids. Our redress, through protests, diplomatic processes, and “distinguished considerations,” will first be sought through functionaries of the Dominion Government, and ultimately of the Crown. We may make a bugbear of this if we choose, or we may reduce the aspect of things to the dimensions of simple, sober reason. In either case, it certainly does warn or advise us to keep all the Indians for whom we are responsible under our own management and oversight, without outside stimulus or reinforcement. This is another recommendation of the peace policy, for taming and reducing the savages to fixed residence, to individual rights in the soil, independently of their tribal relations, and to thrifty habits of agriculture and industry.

Positively and sternly, if need be, and with the help of all its appliances of authority and force, must Government put and keep the savage tribes under conditions in which they must work for their own subsistence by manual labor and ingenuity. The soil and water of their own reservations, not the United States Treasury, must furnish them a livelihood. Added to all the old-time grievances which the natives have had against the whites for appropriating their lands, for crowding and slaughtering them, there has been a new, and at present a very piteous and abject, one, — that the Government does not generously and promptly feed and clothe and arm them so that they may subsist in idleness. To all its pledged covenants for annuities and rations with the treaty tribes, the Government of course must be true; saving only, under the stern pressure of circumstances, a Government right of revising the form and material under which promised help or remuneration shall be furnished. But this exaction of residence and