ivil government, in what was so long called the
"Indian country" would have saved many hundreds of millions of
dollars and many thousands of lives. But the inherited prejudice
against "military despotism" has hardly yet been eradicated from
the minds of the millions of freemen who inhabit this country--as
if seventy or fifty, or even thirty, millions of people could not
defend their liberties against a little standing army! A white
murderer was long regarded as so much better than an honest Indian
that the murderer must go free because there was no judge or jury
to try him, while the Indian must be shot by the soldiers, without
trial, for trying to protect himself from murder. If the innocent
could be separated from the guilty, "plague, pestilence, and famine"
would not be an unjust punishment for the crimes committed in this
country against the original occupants of the soil. And it should
be remembered that when retribution comes, though we may not
understand why, the innocent often share the fate of the guilty.
The law under which nations suffer for their crimes does not seem
to differ much from the law of retribution which governs the savage
Indian.

No possible plea of the demands of civilization, or of the interests
of a superior race, can be held to justify such a policy as that
long pursued by the people of this country. The natural law of
the "survival of the fittest" may doubtless be pleaded in explanation
of all that has happened; but that is not a law of Christianity,
nor of civilization, nor of wisdom. It is the law of greed and
cruelty, which generally works in the end the destruction of its
devotees. In their greedy and blind pursuit of their own prey,
they lose sight of the shark that is waiting to devour them. It
is still the "fittest" that survives. It were wiser to remember
that the shark is always well armed, and if you would survive him
you must be fitter than he. If the benign law of civilization
could be relied upon always to govern, then all would be well.
But as long as sharks still live, the cruel law of nature cannot
be ignored. The highest principles and the highest wisdom, combined,
would seem to suggest the higher law as the rule of action toward
the weaker, and the natural law as the rule for defense against
the stronger. This country has, happily, already made some progress
in both directions. If that is continued a few more years, then
all, strong as well as weak, will be