Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/607



“ or civilization is the alternative for those of the Indian race living in the near future on our national domain.” It would be well-nigh as difficult to assign this oft-repeated sentence, as it would be one of our familiar proverbs, to an individual authority. All past experience, all practical wisdom for the present, all reasonable forecasting of what may be before us compel us to face the terms of that alternative. And even this limitation within two conditions comes to us prejudiced by the decision already reached by very many persons — it would be difficult to say whether a majority or a minority among us — who, satisfied that the Indians are incapable and intractable for the process of civilization, accept for them the doom of extinction as a race. This decision has been reached and avowed by many of the most eminent and humane of our statesmen during the whole century; it has been almost uniformly approved by our military men; it has been adopted by vast multitudes of those who have had the fullest and most intimate knowledge of Indian character and life. Whether those who hold this opinion or conviction follow it out in their own minds with the course of measures on the part of our Government and people which is to be engaged to verify it and to effect the result, must be left to inference. Those who reject and denounce this dismal decision as too abominable and hideous even for discussion, will of course insist that the civilization of the Indians is at all events