the East on the Indian question.

"Misused? Yes, the Indians have been misused, badly misused. I know
that. But who have _they_ misused? This whole country is covered with
ruins, and they all go to show that it has been inhabited by a
highly-civilized race of people. And what has become of them? I believe
the Indians cleaned them out long years ago; and now their turn has
come. I find it's a law of Nature"--and here the narrator's tone grew
more reverent as if touching upon a higher theme--"that the weak go to
the wall. It's a hard law, but I don't see any way out of it. The old
Aztecs had to go under, and the Indians will have to follow suit."

Whatever humanitarians and archaeologists may conclude concerning these
opinions, they are nevertheless extensively held in the Far West. The
frontiersman, who sees the Indian only in his native savagery, who has
found it necessary to employ a considerable part of his time in keeping
out of range of poisoned arrows, and who must needs be always upon the
alert lest his family fall a prey to Indian treachery, cannot be
expected to hold any ultra-humanitarian views upon the subject. He has
not been brought in contact with the several partially-civilized tribes,
in whose advancement many see possibilities for the whole race. He
cannot understand why the government allows the Indians to roam over
enormous tracts of land, rich in minerals they will never extract and
containing agricultural possibilities they will never seek to realize.
His plan would be to have only the same governmental care exercised over
the red man as is now enjoyed by the white, and then look to the law of
the survival of the fittest to furnish a solution of the problem. The
case seems so clear and the arguments so potent that he looks for some
outside reasons for their failure, and very naturally thinks he
discovers them in governmental quarters. "There's too many people living
off this Indian business for it to be wound up yet a while." Thus does a
representative man at the outposts express the sentiment of no
inconsiderable class.

Next to the Indian himself, the frontiersman holds in slight esteem the
soldiers who are sent for the protection of the border. The objects of
his supreme hatred still often merit his good opinion for their bravery
and fighting qualities, but upon raw Eastern recruits and West-Point
fledglings he looks with mild disdain. Having learned the Indian methods
by many hard knocks, he