Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/608

588 from this year onward to be the solution of the problem that has so long vexed us. As to any indisposition of the Indians to submit to the process, any intractability or positive resistance to it on their part, the answer is, If civilization is not voluntary on their part it must be compulsory; and the whole force of the Government, arbitrary and irresistible if need be, must be engaged for a peaceful and rightful method, which in its severities will always stop short of the inhumanities of war. These are the leading statements which introduce our present subject. Not unfrequently, in place of the milder word extinction the sterner word extermination is boldly used to define the alternative fate of the Indians. The difference between the words hardly needs to be morally defined here. One may speak of the extinction of the Indians as a result which might follow from natural agencies, irresistible and not requiring any external force to insure it. Extermination implies the use of violent measures to effect it.

The Indian as a subject for civilization furnishes us a topic of profound and varied interest. It does so because it gathers up so many efforts, earnest but futile, for effecting the civilization of savages; because it has called forth such extreme differences of opinion among wise and good men; and, more than all, because, with the dread alternative of extinction or extermination, it suspends the inevitable destiny of the aboriginal race. The whites assume the arbitration on this issue, and do not leave preference or even the right of choice with the Indian. Over and over again civilization has been proffered to and urged upon tribes of Indians. The proffer seems, till quite recently, to have been considered by them with such intelligence as they have, to have been appreciated and weighed by them, and then deliberately rejected; yes, even in dispassionate and kind terms, and with reasons and arguments offered for declining the favor.

It seems but rarely to have occurred to civilized white