A Sunset in Camp

[Lighting the Smoke Signal]

Lighting the Smoke Signal

HIS WARFARE

The Indian has lived such a life of hazard for long centuries that he has
had trained into him a first great instinct to fight. They have a war
star in the sky, and when it moves the time to make war is heavy upon
them. There are many cogent reasons for the belief that before the coming
of the white man there were no general or long-continued wars among the
Indians. There was no motive for war. Quarrels ensued when predatory
tribes sought to filch women or horses. Strife was engendered on account
of the distribution of buffalo, but these disturbances could not be
dignified by the name of war. The country was large and the tribes were
widely separated. Their war implements were of the crudest sort. A shield
would stop a stone-headed arrow, and it necessitated a hand-to-hand
conflict for the use of a flint-headed lance and the ponderous war club.
The white man came, and for hundreds of years their contest has been waged
against a superior force. They have disputed every mile of territory
which has been acquired from them. During all that time they could not
make a knife, a rifle or a round of ammunition. Their method of
communication was confined to the smoke signal, signal fires and scouts.
They had no telegraph, no heliograph, no arsenal. Modern implements of
war they have been able to obtain only in late years and then in meagre
quantities, even then only by capture or at exorbitant rates. The Indian
has proved himself a redoubtable and masterful foe. For more than three
hundred years millions of civilized white people have fought a bitter
battle with three hundred thousand red men. During all these tragic years
the nations of the world have moved on to discovery, subjugation, and
conquest. Nation has taken up arms against nation. England, France, and
Spain have put a rim of colonies about the globe. Our own great civil
struggle has been written down on the pages of history with letters of
blood. England, France, Spain, and the United States have during this
period tried their prowess with these less than three hundred thousand
braves and only now has the decimation become complete. No such striking
example of endurance, power of resistance, and consummate generalship has
been recorded in the annals of ti