The Nez Perces
[pointing to Point Elliott], and our hearts are very sick because you do not do as you promised. We saw the Nisquallys and Puyallups get their annuity paid them last year, and our hearts were sick because we could get nothing. We never fought the whites; they did. If you whites pay the Indians that fight you, it must be good to fight."
"It must be good to fight." Slowly the Indians came into a full understanding of the "hopelessly illogical" policy of the Government under which its benefits were "proportioned not to the good but to the ill desert of the several tribes." War and desolation filled the land, and the tribes of the mountains stubbornly maintained an unequal struggle for that which, to their untutored minds, seemed to be their own country. A despairing and pathetic contest it is when an unlettered race, with its simple views of fundamental justice, comes against calculating, enlightened, and overwhelming might; the dim realization of inferiority kindles in the benighted mind a desperate ferocity which is akin to patriotic zeal in more civilized defenders of native land.
It is impossible to account for this policy of inaction. Millions more were spent in these wars than would have met every obligation under the treaties. Superintendents, agents, and army officers in the field sent appeal after appeal to the Government to act upon the treaties and stop the useless destruction.
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