There could be but one plea on which such considerations as these might be disregarded; and that would be the plea that such forbearance and indulgence on the part of the United States towards the savages only encouraged them to increased insolence and incited them to fresh outrages, rendering the situation less and less tolerable, and in the end involving greater sacrifice of life than would a prompt vindication of the authority of the government, once for all, however disastrous in the immediate result it might prove to existing settlements. If the policy of temporizing which has been described does indeed only serve at the last to aggravate the evil, and by a false appearance of peace to draw within the reach of Indian massacre larger numbers of whites, then it is plainly the duty of the government to recall, as far as may be, its citizens from the exposed frontier, and, at whatever expense of blood and treasure, make issue with the savages, and forever close the question by the complete conquest and reduction of all the hostile or dangerous tribes. But no assumption could be farther from the facts of the case than that the effect of lenity has been to increase the sum of Indian outrage. There is no scintilla of evidence to show that any savage tribe has been incited by the forbearance of the government to increased depredations. On the contrary, the history of the past three years has shown a steady decline in the number of robberies and murders reported on the frontier.
If a humane consideration of the exposed condition of our frontier settlements requires the continuance of the policy of buying off the hostile and dangerous tribes, it is also true that the argument from economy equally favors this action on the part of the government. Expensive as is the Indian service as at present conducted in the interest of peace, it costs far less than fighting. What would be the expense of a general Indian war, which should seek the complete subjugation of the tribes which we have described as potentially hostile, it is impossible to compute within a hundred millions of dollars; but it would undoubtedly reach an aggregate not much short of that of the year of largest preparations and largest operations during the rebellion. Does this seem extravagant, impossible? Words of truth and soberness on such a subject surely might be expected from a commission comprising such men as Gens. Sherman, Harney, Augur, and Terry of the regular army of the United States. Yet these officers united in a report rendered to the President on the 7th of January, 1868, in which they use the following language in reference to the "Chivvington massacre" and the Cheyenne war of 1864:—
"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration and death to the border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece, while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of our border settlers had been butchered, and their property destroyed."
This was the experience of the United States in a contest with an Indian tribe numbering perhaps four thousand men, women, and children, and able to bring into the field not one-fifth as many warriors as the Sioux bands of to-day. Not to go back to wars waged with tribes now subjugated or extinct, were we to cast up the expenditures involved in the Sioux war of 1852-1854, the Cheyenne war of 1864 just referred to, the Navajo war, the second Sioux war in 1866, the second Cheyenne war in 1867, we should undoubtedly reach a total greatly exceeding one hundred millions of dollars. Yet these wars sought only the submission of individual tribes to single demands of the government, and effected, generally, something less than that. It has been shown that the actual expense of the so-called "peace policy" is measured by the increase of the average expenditures of the period 1869 to 1872 over the average expenditures of the period preceding, that increase being about three millions of dollars. This is the sum which is to be compared with the cost of a war which should seek to reduce all the Indian tribes of the continent to complete submission by force of arms, instead of awaiting their gradual, and in the main peaceful reduction through the advance of population and the extension of railways.
We have thus far treated the policy of the government towards the dangerous tribes as one not requiring the use of the military arm in any emergency short of an actual outbreak. We have done so, first, that we might encounter the full effect of the objections to the plan of concession and conciliation; and, secondly, because we hold it true, that, when the alternative is between allowing a considerable degree of insolence and outrage to go unpunished, and entailing upon the Territories a general Indian war, duty and interest require the government to go to the last point of endurance and forbearance with the savages. But this alternative is not always presented: it is often practicable to repress and punish violence, without exposing the settlements to the horrors of massacre. Whenever this can be done, it is scarcely necessary to say it should be done, and done effectually. The feature of the present Indian policy of the government which allows this to be done without incurring general Indian war is known as the reservation system,—a system shrewdly devised to meet the known weaknesses of the Indian character. By it extensive tracts have been set apart for the warlike tribes, within which they may pursue all their customs and habits of life, and indulge themselves in savagery, being also subsisted thereon to the extent of their actual necessities, but outside of which bands or parties are liable to be struck by the military at any time, without warning, and without any implied hostility to those members of the tribe who remain on their reservation, and deport themselves according to the conditions of the compact. The brilliant campaign of Gen. Crook in Arizona during the past season has been prosecuted with the most scrupulous observance of the reservation system, as marked out by the government, and accepted by the Indians themselves. Such a use of the military arm constitutes no abandonment of the "peace policy," and involves no disparagement of it. Military operations thus conducted are not in the nature of war, but of discipline, and are so recognized by the tribes whose marauding bands and parties are scourged back to the reservations by the troops. The effect of all this is something more than negative. It does not merely serve to chastise offending individuals and parties without a breach of peace with the tribe; but it is made the means of impressing the less enterprising Indians with an increasing sense of the power of the government. It was not to be expected that the entire body of a warlike tribe would consent to be restrained in their Ishmaelitish proclivities without a struggle on the part of the more audacious to maintain their traditional freedom. The reservation system allows this issue to be fought out between our troops and the more daring of the savages, without involving in the contest tribes with which our army in its present numbers is wholly inadequate to cope.
Nor will the full effect of this consideration be appreciated if it be not borne in mind that the Indian is intensely susceptible to severe punishment. His own wars are so bloodless, his skirmishing tactics so cowardly and resultless, that the savage fighting of the whites, their eagerness for close quarters, and their deadly earnestness when engaged hand to hand, impress him with a strange terror. With him, as with all persons and peoples in whom the imagination is predominant, the effect of disaster is not measured by the actual loss and suffering entailed, but by the source, the shape, the suddenness, of it. Indeed, it is astonishing how completely the spirit of an Indian tribe may be broken by a catastrophe which does not necessarily impair its fighting power.
Nor even is it necessary that the Indian's sense of justice should be met by the chastisement received. Undiscriminating in his own revenge, he does not look for nicely measured retribution on the part of his enemy. Hence it is that certain of the so-called—and sometimes properly so called—massacres perpetrated by the army, or by frontier militia, have had very different results from what would have been predicted by persons familiar only with habits of thought and feeling among our own people.[D] Injustice and cruelty exasperate men of our race; but the Indian is never other than cruel and unjust under resentment. Let him feel that he has been injured by a white man, and he will tomahawk the first white man he meets, without a thought whether his victim be guilty or innocent. Let him suffer at the hand of a member of a neighboring tribe, and he will lie all day in wait for another member of that tribe with just as much anticipation of gratified hate as if he awaited the footsteps of the wrong-doer. Nay, let him have a feud with one of his own blood, and he will devote the speechless babes of his enemy to his infernal malice. Here, undoubtedly, we find the explanation of the fact that massacres, damnable in plot and circumstance, have struck such deadly and lasting terror into tribes of savages; while, occurring between nations of whites, they would have kindled the flames of war to inextinguishable fury.
We have thus far treated the question, What shall be done with the Indian as an obstacle to the progress of railways and of settlements?—to the exclusion of the inquiry, What shall be done to promote his advancement in industry and the arts of life?—not merely because, for all those tribes and bands to which the first question applies (i. e. those which are potentially hostile, and towards which the government is, as we have attempted to show, bound in interest and humanity to exercise great forbearance till they shall cease to be formidable to the settlements and to the pioneers of settlement), that question is, in logical order, precedent to any discussion of methods to be taken to educate and civilize them; but also because it is in effect likewise precedent to any deliberate, comprehensive, and permanent adjustment of the difficulties experienced in treating the Indian tribes which are neither hostile in disposition nor formidable by reason of their situation or their numbers. So long as the attention of the executive department is occupied by efforts to preserve the peace; so long as Congress is asked yearly to appropriate three millions of dollars to feed and clothe insolent savages; so long as the public mind is exasperated by reports of Indian outrages occurring in any section of the country,—so long will it be vain to expect an adequate treatment of the question of Indian civilization.
It must not be understood that nothing is being done for the industrial and moral instruction of the peaceful and more advanced tribes[E] pending the reduction of their turbulent brethren to terms; but the efforts, and expenditures of the present time fall far short of the completeness and consistency necessary to constitute a system. Much that is doing is in compliance with treaty stipulations, and hence is well done, whether it have any practical result or not. Much, again, of what is doing, although so inadequate to the necessities of the situation as to yield no positive results, is preventing waste by keeping up established services and agencies, and, in a measure, preserving the character and habits of the Indians from further deterioration. Much, still, is in the way of experiment, from which may be derived many valuable principles and suggestions for the treatment of the Indian question on the larger scale which will be necessary in the future. Much, however, it must be confessed, is done out of an uneasy desire to do something for this unfortunate people, or in generous response to appeals from persons in official or private station who have chanced to become particularly interested in the welfare of individual tribes and bands, and thereafter fail not (small blame to them) to beset Congress and the departments for special consideration and provision for their protégés. It can scarcely need to be remarked, that these are not the ways to constitute a system.