fenced in with golden gates from
all pagans and unbelievers, and a hell where the souls of such are
tortured eternally. We are honorable, truthful, refined, religious,
peaceful; we hate cruelty and injustice; our business is to educate,
Christianize, and protect the rights and property of the weak and the
uncivilized."

This sort of talk had its effect. Let us see what followed.

CHAPTER II

THE HOW AND THE WHY OF INDIAN WARS

I have tried to set forth the character and motives of the primitive
Indian as they were affected by contact with civilization. In a word,
demoralization was gradual but certain, culminating in the final loss of
his freedom and confinement to the reservation under most depressing
conditions. It must be borne in mind that there has been scarcely any
genuine wild life among us for the past thirty-five years. Sitting
Bull's band of Sioux were the last real hostiles of their tribe to
surrender, in 1880, and Geronimo's Apaches followed in 1886.

It is important to understand the underlying causes of Indian wars.
There are people to-day who believe that the Indian likes nothing better
than going on the warpath, killing and scalping from sheer native
cruelty and lust for blood. His character as a man of peace has not
been appreciated. Yet it is matter of history that the newcomers were
welcomed in almost every case with unsuspecting kindness, and in his
dealings with the white man the original owner of the soil has been
uniformly patient and reasonable, offering resistance only under
irresistible provocation.

There have been but few noteworthy Indian wars in the history of
America. In 1629 Powhatan's brother revolted against the colonists in
Virginia, and King Philip took up arms in Massachusetts in 1675. The
Cherokee war of 1758 in North and South Carolina came next; then the
conspiracy of Pontiac in 1763, the Creek war from 1812 to 1830, and the
Seminole war from 1820 to 1833. These wars in the South were incited by
the insolence and aggressiveness of the Americans. The struggles of the
Algonquins and the Iroquois, however, were not conducted wholly on their
own initiative. These tribes were used as allies in the long-drawn-out
conflicts between the French and the English, and thus initiated into
the motives and the methods of the white man's warfare.

I doubt very much if Pontiac would have carried his policies so far had
it not been for the encouragement he received from French trade