The Indian Dispossessed
crushed. The westward course of population is neither to be denied nor delayed for the sake of all the Indians that ever called this country their home. They must yield or perish; and there is something that savors of providential mercy in the rapidity with which their fate advances upon them, leaving them scarcely the chance to resist before they shall be surrounded and disarmed. . . .
"The freedom of expansion which is working these results is to us of incalculable value. To the Indian it is of incalculable cost. Every year's advance of our frontier takes in a territory as large as some of the kingdoms of Europe. We are richer by hundreds of millions; the Indian is poorer by a large part of the little that he has. This growth is bringing imperial greatness to the nation; to the Indian it brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary."
So "expansion" and "imperial greatness" are not terms born of the Philippine situation. The business dates back some thirty years.
"Discipline" of the strenuous kind proceeded with the reduction of the hostile Indian in strict accordance with the good old law of "the Survival of the Fittest," despite the handicap of the Slogan. And it is beyond the expectation of reason that a sentimental expression of "inalienable rights," at best the cry of a distressed people even though still persisting as a living truth, should have secured to the Indian as his game preserve vast areas of coun-
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