have been greatly traduced), in
their reports, are far more apt to be unjust to the whites than to the
reds; and the Federal authorities, though unable to prevent much of
the injustice, still did check and control the white borderers very
much more effectually than the Indian sachems and war-chiefs
controlled their young braves. The tribes were warlike and
bloodthirsty, jealous of each other and of the whites; they claimed
the land for their hunting grounds, but their claims all conflicted
with one another; their knowledge of their own boundaries was so
indefinite that they were always willing, for inadequate compensation,
to sell land to which they had merely the vaguest title; and yet, when
once they had received the goods, were generally reluctant to make
over even what they could; they coveted the goods and scalps of the
whites, and the young warriors were always on the alert to commit
outrages when they could do it with impunity. On the other hand, the
evil-disposed whites regarded the Indians as fair game for robbery and
violence of any kind; and the far larger number of well-disposed men,
who would not willingly wrong any Indian, were themselves maddened by
the memories of hideous injuries received. They bitterly resented the
action of the government, which, in their eyes, failed to properly
protect them, and yet sought to keep them out of waste, uncultivated
lands which they did not regard as being any more the property of the
Indians than of their own hunters. With the best intentions, it was
wholly impossible for any government to evolve order out of such a
chaos without resort to the ultimate arbitrator--the sword.

The purely sentimental historians take no account of the difficulties
under which we labored, nor of the countless wrongs and provocations
we endured, while grossly magnifying the already lamentably large
number of injuries for which we really deserve to be held responsible.
To get a fair idea of the Indians of the present day, and of our
dealings with them, we have fortunately one or two excellent books,
notably "Hunting Grounds of the Great West," and "Our Wild Indians,"
by Col. Richard I. Dodge (Hartford, 1882), and "Massacres of the
Mountains," by J. P. Dunn (New York, 1886). As types of the opposite
class, which are worse than valueless, and which nevertheless might
cause some hasty future historian, unacquainted with the facts, to
fall into grievous error, I may mention, "A Century of Dishon