, his
reservation pass.

"How! Me good Injun," he called.

"How!" Roosevelt answered. "I'm glad you are. But don't come any
closer."

The Indian asked for sugar and tobacco. Roosevelt told him that he had
none. Another Indian now began almost imperceptibly to approach.
Roosevelt called to him to keep back, but the Indian paid no
attention.

Roosevelt whipped up his gun once more, covering the spokesman. That
individual burst into a volume of perfect Anglo-Saxon profanity; but
he retired, which was what he was supposed to do. Roosevelt led the
faithful Manitou off toward the plains. The Indians followed him at a
distance for two miles or more, but as he reached the open country at
last they vanished in the radiant dust of the prairie.

Indians were a familiar sight in Medora and about the ranch-houses up
and down the Little Missouri. In groups of a half-dozen or over they
were formidable, but singly they were harmless and rather pathetic
creatures. Roosevelt's attitude toward the Indians as a race was
unequivocal. He detested them for their cruelty, and even more for
their emphasis on cruelty as a virtue to be carefully developed as a
white man might develop a sense of chivalry; but he recognized the
fact that they had rights as human beings and as members of tribes
having treaty relations with the United States, and insisted in season
and out of season that those rights be respected.

I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western
view of the Indian [he said in the course of a lecture which
he delivered in New York, during January, 1886]. I don't go
so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead
Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I
shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the
tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than
the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New
York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in
vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the
Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they
rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of
themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the
plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked
Sheridan for a cannon. "What! Do you want to kill my
soldiers with it?" asked the general. "No," replied the
chief, "want to kill the cowboy; kill sol