Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/10

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PREFACE.

its indebtedness to the pioneers of every part of the country: first, in inviting settlement, and then in not properly protecting settlers. The policy of the government for a hundred years has been to throw out a vanguard of immigration, and when these had fallen victims to savage cupidity or hatred, to follow with a tardy army and "punish" what it should have prevented. The Spaniards did better than this, for they sent a garrison out with every colony and "reduced" the native population with comparatively little bloodshed.

If this record of the first ten years of Indian warfare in Oregon presents this subject fairly to the reader, it will have achieved the purpose for which it was written.

Salem, July 30, 1893.