The writer in the Oregonian, quoted above, held that it was a fundamental error in the treatment of Indians to acknowledge their rights to the soil and to make treaties with them as if they were nations. Governor Ashley, of Montana, also declared that treaty-making with Indians ought to cease.[5] To the same effect C. H. Hale, Superintendent of Indian affairs in Washington Territory, wrote as follows: "I am well satisfied that a radical change should be made in our mode of treatment towards the Indians. I do not consider the language as any too strong when I say, that for us to negotiate treaties with them as it is usually done is little better than a farce. We profess by such an act to recognize their equality in status and in power, and to clothe them with a national existence that does not at all pertain to them. Instead of thus exalting them in mere form, they should be treated as they really are, the wards of the government."[6]
The rougher element among the whites, who were in contact with the Indians, bothered themselves not at all concerning theories or treaties and seldom showed towards Indians even ordinary human feeling. "A d—d Indian," as was the usual expression, got no consideration at their hands. Indians were killed by desperadoes in Montana with despicable wantonness.[7] A farmer Indian of the Walla Walla tribe had taken some wheat to mill at Walla Walla and had hitched his horses to his wagon to feed, when a gambler came from a nearby saloon and took one of the horses. The owner could not recover it, because men feared to testify against one of the roughs: but the Indian was reimbursed by employes of the Umatilla agency.[8] In southern Idaho Indian women and children were killed in attacks made by volunteer soldiers, and it was charged that many Indian women were violated.[9] In the former case, however, it was claimed that the Indian women fought as hard as the men and that they were indistinguishable from the men in a melee.
It is fair to remember, in judging of atrocities committed by whites, that not a few of the frontiersmen were inflamed by memories of horrid deeds committed by Indians upon relatives and friends.[10] We of the present generation, indeed, can scarcely understand how ingrained was racial hatred in the white frontiersman of that day. "From the cradle up he was the recipient of folk lore which placed the Indian as his hereditary and implacable enemy. To the childish request, 'Grandma, tell me a story,' it was bear or Indian, ghost stories being too tame for frontier life, and that the bear and Indian did not stand upon the same plane as objects to be exterminated, seldom entered into the thoughts of the grandmother or the little one soon to take part in the conquest of the wilderness. * * * * Granny might bring tears to the eyes of her little auditors by telling how the bear cubs moaned over their dead mother, but no tears flowed for the Indian children made destitute by this perpetual conflict."[11] "On the other hand, there might have been in an early day a measure of truth in the assertion that murder is merit; scalps enviable trophies; plunder legitimate; the abduction of women and their violation, a desirable achievement."[12]
In judging of Indian populations, however, and of the relations of whites to them, discriminations need to be made. There were within tribes bad Indians and good Indians, just as there were bad whites and good whites; and it was generally the bad men on both sides that made trouble. Moreover, there was a great difference between such comparatively well ordered tribes as the Coeur d'Alenes or the Nez Perces and the scattered banditti of southern Idaho and southeastern Oregon. This difference is dwelt upon in a report of the Committee on Indian Affairs of the Idaho Legislature, which was made in 1866. In the northern portion of the Territory, the report said, "the Nez Perces, Coeur d'Alenes, Pend d'Oreilles, etc., have been for a long time gradually adopting the pursuits of peace and habits of civilization, under good influences, acquired property and permanent habitations and rely for surer subsistence upon the cultivation of the soil and the raising of stock. But in South Idaho, throughout that portion of the Territory south of Snake River, your committee regret to say, a far different condition of affairs has existed from the organization of the Territory, and still continues. The scattered clans in all this region, known as the Shoshones or Snakes, inhabit a country for the most part destitute of timber and game, spreading into wide deserts, and affording them secure retreats in rugged mountains and deep canyons. Never having any fixed habitations, they acquire no property except by plunder, and hold none except for temporary subsistence and plunder. So, far from cultivating the soil, or any arts of peace, they have to a great extent ceased to depend for food upon fish, grass seeds, crickets, roots, etc., and rely upon what they seize by murder and robbery on the public highways and frontier settlements. * * * * * They have no recognized head, but simply leaders of clans, and know nothing of treaty obligations. Nothing, therefore, but vigorous war, that will push them to extremities of starvation or extermination, can ever bring peace to our borders and security to our highways."[13]
If one tries to imagine himself in the conditions that then existed in southern Idaho, he will, perhaps, better understand why even humane people could have had stern and cruel opinions with regard to the treatment of some classes of Indians. There was no danger of attack upon settlements of any size; there was, in fact, no declared war. But stock was constantly being stolen, lone men murdered, and pack trains attacked. If a few men pursued the Indians, the latter would turn and fight like fiends, and with the advantage of knowledge of the country. To dwellers in secure homes, these enumerations may appear not particularly significant, but to one with understanding of frontier conditions they mean much. If travellers, for example, had their animals stolen, it meant all the discomfort and danger of being left afoot in a country of great distances. If a rancher had his stock run off, it meant temporary impoverishment and disablement. For white men to steal horses was quite generally recognized as a capital crime; why, then, compunction for Indians? Men, moreover, who looked down upon the mutilated remains of comrades, cut off in the unceasing assassinations, were very likely to vow vengeance upon the whole murderous race. Finally, there were wider considerations affecting the whole community; Indian attacks deterred packers, freighters, and stage owners, thereby raising freights, delaying mails, making supplies more scarce and costly, impeding immigration, and hindering the investment of capital,—in a word, checking prosperity in a way to which no civilized community would submit.
The men who went out to find and to kill Indians who were thus damaging the communities, were not always nice men; but they often showed self-denial in leaving good-paying employments, and they endured great privations and did a necessary work for civilization.[14] The character of the United States troops, likewise, who served in these regions during the Civil War was sometimes questionable; but frontier communities were justifiably grateful to men like those of General Conner's command, many of whom in the Bear River expedition endured freezing, wounds, and death in corralling and fighting a large band of predatory Indians.[15]
The exasperation of the southern Idaho communities, under continual Indian harassment, became extreme. This was especially true in Owyhee. A meeting of citizens offered rewards for scalps; one hundred dollars for that of a buck, fifty dollars for that of a squaw and twenty-five dollars for "everything in the shape of an Indian under ten."[16] When fifty-five Indians were reported killed in Humboldt, the local paper in Owyhee rejoiced that these were made "permanently friendly"; the next item, in contrast, is an announcement of a Christmas Festival for the Sunday School children at the Union Church, at which there were to be an address, songs by the children, and distribution of gifts.[17] The month previous, on report of seventy Indians being killed and scalped in Nevada, the same paper burst out with,—"Here's seventy more reasons for those safely-located, chicken-hearted, high-toned-treaty-moral suasion philanthropists to ignorantly wail about, and we're glad of it."[18] Since it was so extremely difficult to catch these Indian marauders, a novel proposal was advanced, possibly not in real earnest: "If some Christian gentlemen will furnish a few bales of blankets from a small-pox hospital, well inoculated," the Avalanche announced, "we will be distributing agent, and see that no Indian is without a blanket. That kind of peace is better than treaties." "These ideas suit us exactly," commented the Idaho World.[19]
In the case of Indians such as these in southern Idaho, the reservation system as yet was impossible; but for the more amenable Indians, who lived farther to the west and north, this system seemed not only possible, but necessary. For the mining advance was sweeping away the native means of subsistence. Game was receding into the more remote localities, and the camass and cous grounds were being continually devastated by the hogs of settlers. The fish supply, to be sure, still remained, but the location of the fisheries on the streams along which most of the travel proceeded made necessary a contact with whites which brought evil results to the Indians. It was fortunate, therefore, that arrangements for the establishment of reservations were well under way, when the mining advance began. For the Indians east of the Cascades the treaties of 1855 (ratified in 1859) provided five reservations, each the size of a large county. These were the Yakima, the Warm Springs, the Umatilla, the Nez Perces and the Flathead. On all of these reservations agents were to be stationed, mills were to be erected, farming tools furnished, and schools and teachers provided. The policy itself was conceived on generous, humane, and enlightened principles, and it is doubtful if, under the circumstances, a better could have been devised. But the test came in administration; the difficulties and weaknesses, as the system worked out, proved to be many and formidable.
Among the first of these obstacles to become apparent was the natural unfitness of the Indian for civilized life.
It was always a difficult task for a white settler in a new country to get a start in the cultivation of the soil. He had to be able to gain support in some manner while he was building his house, breaking up the soil, and waiting for his crops to mature. Tools were generally scarce and dear, and many shifts and ingenious devices had to be employed. To be sure, the American frontiersman had become so expert in this work, that he went at it with comparative ease; but how difficult such work is for the untrained white man may be seen today in the case of Englishmen coming direct from the old country to western Canada.[20]