n upon Christian Europe, and
who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell
was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by
diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these
human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing
influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of
the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable
and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the
Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of
improvement.

It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the
wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every
instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic
disregard of their rights of person, property, and life. The letter of
Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month,
1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman,
Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching
investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not
astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in
silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence.
The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."

It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer
settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind
vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the
real wrong-doers. They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as
proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can
prevent their repetition. But a moment's consideration compels us to
admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man. "All wars
are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom
has been a great battle-field. What Indian raid has been more dreadful
than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless
atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the