tion, as
indicating capabilities of higher things than are usually credited of
Indians,--the inveterate and ferocious animosities of the Pawnees toward
the Brule Sioux have been so far sacrificed to the requirements of the
government and the personal entreaties of their agent, that the past
summer witnessed the phenomenon, astonishing to all who were cognizant
of the deadly feuds existing for generations between these tribes, of
Pawnees and Brules hunting almost side by side, the camp-fires of both
being distinctly visible upon the same plain, without a murder being
committed, or so much as a horse stolen, by either party.

* * * * *

If, then, we may assume that Indian civilization is not altogether
impossible, let us inquire what should be the policy of the government
towards the Indian tribes when they cease to be dangerous to our
frontier population, and to oppose the progress of settlement, either by
violence or by menace. In such a discussion, we are bound to have a
reasonable consideration for the interests of the white man as well as
for the rights of the red man, but above all to defer to whatever
experience declares in respect to the conditions most favorable to the
growth of self-respect and self-restraint in minds so strangely and
unfortunately constituted as is the mind of the North American Indian.

_First._ The reservation system should be made the general and permanent
policy of the government. By this is meant something more than that the
Indians should not be robbed of their lands in defiance of treaty
stipulations, or that the Indian title should be respected, and the
Indians maintained in possession until they can be made ready to cede
their lands to the government, or to sell them, with the consent of the
government, to the whites. The proposition is that the United States, as
the only power competent to receive such lands by cession, or to
authorize their sale, should formally establish the principle of
separation and seclusion, without reference to the wishes either of the
Indians or of encroaching whites; should designate by law an ample and
suitable reservation for each tribe and band not entitled by treaty; and
should, in any reductions thereafter requiring to be made, provide that
such reductions shall be by cutting off distinct portions from the
outside, and not in such a way as to allow veins of white settlement to
be injected, no matter whether along a strea