Not too fast, my friend. While it is true that each succeeding wave of immigration to the border line has borne on its crest a few bad men mixed with the good, it is also true that the great majority of the frontier men were of the latter class,—brave, fearless pioneers as God has ever created for noble work; rough, unpolished men and women, with great hearts that opened ever to their kind. I assert here, in reiteration, that nowhere in all this broad land can be found men and women of larger hearts and nobler aims than frontier people. As far as their treatment of the Indian tribes is concerned, I assert, fearless of contradiction, that three-fourths of them are the Indians’ best friends; and that, if dissensions arise, they are caused by bad white men, who mix and mingle with the Indians, and, by their wilful acts of dissipation, provoke quarrel and bloodshed, thereby involving good citizens. When once blood is spilled, the Indian too often feels justified, by his religion, in wreaking vengeance on the innocent. They retaliate; and hence border warfare reigns, and the bloody chapter is repeated over and over again, until “Extermination” rings along the frontier-line, and both races take up the cry.
The question has been asked twice ten thousand times, What is the remedy? For two hundred years,
political economists, statesmen and philosophers have been proposing, experimenting, and failing in schemes and plans for the Indian. Never yet have they come squarely up to duty as American citizens and Christian patriots should, and recognized the manhood of the Indian, treating him as a man, dealing justly and fairly with him, redressing his wrongs, while punishing him for his crimes.
In plain words, we have never, as a nation, experimented in our management of the Indian race of America, with a few plain laws that were first written on the marble tablets of Sinai, and sent along down succeeding ages, between the 12th and 19th verses of the 20th chapter of Exodus. Nor have we always remembered the 31st verse of the sixth chapter of St. Luke:—
“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”
If, as we proudly assert, we, as a nation, are the rich inheritors of the priceless boon of liberty, then let us be the champions of human rights.
If we are the friends of the weak and oppressed, let us protect those whose claim upon us is based upon a prior inheritance, and whose weakness has been our strength.
If we would welcome the exiled patriot from other lands, let us give the hand of fellowship to those whose birthright to this land cannot be disputed.
If our civilization is the most exalted on the face of the earth, then let us be the most magnanimous in our treatment of the remnants of a people who gave our fathers the welcome hand.
If we would be just, then let us remember that