Littell's Living Age/Volume 138/Issue 1779/United States' Indian Wars
UNITED STATES' INDIAN WARS.
For some time past ennui has been the prevailing complaint along the United States Indian frontier. Buffaloes have been scarce, and the redskins so uniformly peaceable, that no reasonable excuse could be found for testing the capacity of small arms on them. Under these circumstances, every lover of his species (with a white face) will rejoice to hear that boredom is at an end, and that the summer of 1878 promises to be one in which much aboriginal gore will be shed in the regions that lie under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. A general Indian war is on hand. This we learn from the secretary of the interior, Carl Schurz. More troops and more money are necessary. This is the burden of General Sherman's telegram. The Shoshones and Bannacks of Idaho and Oregon are moving from the head-waters of the Columbia River and taking up their position in the lava beds between Great Campas Prairie and the Salmon River, a locality which, in the Modoc war, the Caucasians who engaged in that inglorious struggle found a remarkably difficult bit of country. It might be remarked that it was their tribesmen and their near cousins, the Nez Percez, or Pierced Noses, who were about this time last year at war with the United States, and were, as we read in official documents, utterly routed by the courage and energy of the troops under the command of a certain General Howard, a warlike paladin dwelling in those parts. The truth of the matter was that General Howard and his warriors were utterly routed by White Bird and his colored clansmen, who only surrendered when they found their comestibles growing short. It is this same General Howard who is at present sending alarming despatches to the Washington government, and demanding more troops, more powder, more bullets, more corned beef, and, above all, more money, in order to crush the Ishmaelites who are insolent enough to imagine that they have a better right to their native land than the lank men who "located" thereabouts some thirty or forty years ago at the outside. The general who so covered his name with glory last year professes himself anxious again to seek the battle-field, but confesses that with his recollections of one or two untoward events in his career, he does not feel justified in moving south on the "hostiles." The truth of the matter is, the United States troops along the frontier are few, and not very fierce, while the Indians are numerous, and in the matter of blood-letting, exceedingly skilful operators. They know every pass, every spring, every grassy valley. They are troubled with no commissariat wagons, despatches, artillery, nor ambulance trains. They can subsist on anything, from sage-bush shoots to grasshoppers, and as their wardrobe, bedding, and uniform consists of a ragged blanket, they travel even more quickly than does the proverbial proprietor of the thin pair of breeches. Worst of all, that brown son of Belial, Sitting Bull, after having enjoyed an agreeable relaxation among his Sioux kindred in Manitoba, "cal'lates," as the frontiersmen say, on moving south, and replenishing his fast decreasing stock of scalps and serviceable horses of American breed. Now, the United States know Sitting Bull. We do not, for our part, believe that he is a West Point graduate, George Francis Train, or even General Butler, in disguise. In the first place, he is much too honest to be the latter gentleman, is not a fool, and hence cannot be the second, while his military skill is of rather a higher grade than results from a training in even the admirable military school on the Hudson River. The truth is, that Sitting Bull is a Sioux chief, with a taste for liberty and plunder, and, in pursuit of these penchants, found himself hotly pursued by a certain General Custer. This general was a skilful soldier, after the text-books, and accordingly so arranged his plans that his rival should be surrounded, and sent, with all his followers, to the happy hunting-grounds as fast as Shrapnel shell and Henry revolving rifles could put them. But Sitting Bull was also a soldier, and, in his own way, a kind of prairie Moltke, for in the Little Horn Cañon he surprised Custer and all his men, and meted out to them the measure they had prepared for him and his soapless spearsmen. Thereafter, not illogically considering the United States climate unsuitable for long life, he quietly moved over the frontier, and settled down in the Canadian Dominion, where, being justly treated, he has behaved himself as Indians, and most other people do, under like circumstances. In the United States the Indians have always been at war with the whites; in the British possessions rarely, and never as tribes.
We note this renewed Indian war in the United States, not because in an Indian war is there any novelty. On the contrary, for a period beyond which the memory of man runneth not, the United States government and citizens have been at murderous feud with the race whose fair heritage they now occupy, and, there is every likelihood, will be, until the last "hostile" Indian's bones lie very peaceably on the green prairie, or in a glass case in the Smithsonian Institution., When Captain John Smith and his swashbucklering cavaliers landed in the "Empire of Virginia," the aborigines of the United States, judging from the traces they have left behind, could not have been less than four or five millions in number. We question if at the present moment they number five hundred thousand. Driven from bank to wall, and from wall to ditch, they have contested every foot-breadth of the weary road over which they have had to retreat to make way for the Anglo-Saxon flood. Disease, whiskey, misery untold, and villanous saltpetre have civilized them off the face of the earth which was once their own. Once all the region east of the Mississippi, from Maine to Louisiana, was thickly peopled with the prosperous villages of those whom the old travellers called "the salvages." No part of America now shows so thickly populated a country, or so joyous a savage race as those who there hunted in the woods, and paddled their birch canoes, or Mandan coracles. With the exception of a few all but civilized fragments of tribes in one or two of the states, there is not now one single Indian — who owns to the name — in all that wide region. A swarthy, keen-eyed lawyer, pleading in the Supreme Court of New York, or a very dark-haired gentleman who sits next you in a general's uniform at a state dinner in the White House, are to the keenest ethnological eye about the only signs of the now thickly peopled states, covered with cities and towns, having been once inhabited only by dwellers in wigwams, who fished the salmon and hunted the bear and the deer, with no man to make them afraid.
Yet — paradoxical though the statement may seem — the United States government has not primarily treated the natives badly. They have recognized their right to every foot-breadth of the land, and have — perhaps under pressure — formed treaties with them for the cession of it to the whites under conditions which seem at first sight not unjust, and even favorable to the original holders, who made little use of it. The government arranged that the Indians should cede their lands, and receive so much down for them, and the rest in yearly annuities terminable at a long date, while large tracts of good land were secured "for all time" to the Indians on which to live and, if possible, cultivate the arts of peace. On these "reservations" the government "located" the Indians. They built them houses, supplied them with agricultural implements, missionaries, schoolmasters, and all appliances of civilization, and above all they supplied them with that acme of all roguery — an Indian agent. The agents were not selected for their knowledge of aboriginal character, or, indeed, with any regard to their character whatever. They were merely the ruck of decayed politicians or wire-pullers, not presentable enough for foreign missions, or with souls above post-offices. The result need not be told. Yet, strange to say, these offices were and are largely run after. A lawyer with a practice of ten thousand dollars per annum in San Francisco or Chicago has been known to accept an Indian agency in some remote place, and after living there for five years retire — stranger still to say — with a fortune. Probably he may have saved it from his salary — there are some very economical people even in America. But in regard to this the world has been uniformly sceptical, and, we are bound to say, not unreasonably. For on an average the salary of an Indian agent is only fifteen hundred dollars per annum in greenbacks, and without rations, in a quarter where rations cost no little money; indeed, the fact need not be concealed — for in America there is nothing better known — the officials of the Indian department are notoriously dishonest. The Indian annuities pass through their hands, and so do the Indian contracts, and a large percentage of both go no further. There may be exceptions, but the exceptions prove the rule. Endless stories are told of the peculations of these men, one of whom a facetious senator once described as "that noblest, but at the same time rarest, work of God, an honest Indian agent." No subject is a more favorite one for the American press to dilate on, or for the transatlantic philanthropist to thunder about. So scandalous has this state of matters become that in one or two places the government has put the Indians in charge of the Quakers, as being pious men, and, therefore, presumably honest. But lately this has not worked altogether well, and for years past there has been an agitation to have the Indian department, commissioner, superintendents, agents, interpreters, and all, incorporated with the war department. But that would, in fact, be only removing the evil to another quarter, not eradicating it; though, we are bound to say, that an officer and a gentleman would be more likely to be honest than a New York ward "repeater," who may be an officer but is not a gentleman. But the evil does not end then. The Indians know perfectly well that the agent is a thief, and often tell him so. Various Indian wars have originated in this way. But after being secure in their reservations — as they think — an order comes to remove the Indians further off. Their improvements and their rich lands have excited the envy of the whites, whose votes are too powerful for Congressmen of flabby fibre to resist. And so the Indian, amid bloodshed and hate, has again to take up his weary western tramp, knowing that again he will have to remove. The result is that he loses heart, becomes utterly depraved and demoralized, and adding to his original sin that learned from the agents, and the entourage of an agency, becomes impervious to anything like civilization or ennobling influences. General Pope, only a few years ago, reported that he had examined into the causes of all the Indian wars in the far West, and he had come to the conclusion that in no case were the Indians the original aggressors. However, as the savages subscribe to no newspapers, and are powerless in caucus and convention, it is nobody's business to advocate their cause, but everybody's interest to conceal the truth. The end, no doubt, will be that every summer, as the grass and game get plentiful enough, some "Sitting Bull" or other will make unhappy the life of some General Howard, or that "Young-man-afraid-of-his-ho'sses" will not show himself so afraid of other peoples.