rious official positions to "turn an honest penny," can scarcely be quoted as evidence of our search for the needed information. Tales of violence and wrong, of outrage and devilish malignity, committed by Indians, are rife all along our frontiers; but who ever hears the other side? Who chronicles the inciting causes, the long, unbroken series of injuries perpetrated by the semi-civilized white savages who, like Cain, fled from the retributive justice of outraged humanity, and sought refuge among the copper-colored savages of the woods and the plains? Naturally ferocious, warlike, revengeful and treacherous as were the aborigines of America, we have educated them to a pitch of refinement in cruelty, deceit and villainy far beyond their normal standard. If the white man has come to be regarded as his natural enemy, it may be set down as the result of long and murderous schooling. The inherent disposition of the American nomad inclined him to hospitality; but that inclination has been completely blotted out, and its opposite engrafted on his nature. Legends and traditions of white men's ingratitude have been handed down through so many generations, and the experiences of the living have been in such direct accordance with them, that they have become prime articles of their creed. Keenly alive to a sense of the inferiority of their armament, incapable of subsisting large bodies of men for any considerable period, and perpetually engaged in the work of exterminating each other, the several tribes have been reduced to the necessity of employing deceit against force, cunning against courage, artifice against honesty.
One of the most serious obstacles in the way of a settled and satisfactory arrangement with our Indian tribes results from our own form of government, which
