Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/601

Rh and Territories in whose bounds they lie are subjected by them to all sorts of annoyances, complications, and practical evils. It is found to be utterly impossible to restrict the Indians to them. In some treaties a conditional privilege has been covenanted to the occupants of hunting beyond them; in others this liberty has been restrained. But neither the limited right nor the positive restriction avail to keep the most active and restive of the Indians from lawless and dangerous roaming, provoking hostilities.

In the mean time we have found that it is inexpedient and impracticable, if not actually impossible, to isolate and segregate from civilized privileges and uses such vast expanses of rich and desirable territory. Our own restless, enterprising, adventurous, and rapidly thickening population will not be kept out of them. The discovery of mineral wealth in them operates like a clarion blast to summon armed companies of miners and of purveyors to their wants. Then, too, the maintenance of Government posts and agencies makes necessary roads, mail-routes, and stations; and the railroad becomes of itself a primary law of Nature, carrying with it a right of eminent domain.

And just coincident with the pressure of these urgent reasons conflicting with the theory and the working of Indian reservations, philanthropical and economical considerations, having in view simply the best good if not the preservation from extinction of the natives themselves, come in to indicate the necessity of a radical change of policy. The steady failure of game and of the other conditions requisite for the continuance of the wild life of the Indians in their tribal relations is reducing them to a miserable, idle, and vegetative state, under which they rapidly deteriorate and become utterly demoralized as vagrants and paupers. If we wish to reclaim or save them, and relieve our own burdens in their support, we must feel fully justified in a recourse even to many breaches of covenant of our own pledged faith. The conditions under which we