method for realizing the conviction. The last Report of the United States Commissioner for Indian Affairs (1881) is emphatic on this point. He says: —
“There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history
and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization, who is not
well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place;
to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage
and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground.
One of the two must die. If the Indians are to be civilized and
become a happy and prosperous people, which is certainly the
object and intention of our Government, they must learn our language
and adopt our modes of life. We are fifty millions of people, and
they are only one fourth of one million. The few must yield to the
many.”
Anticipating a matter which will demand our deliberate
notice farther on, the Commissioner adds, that, as we cannot
expect the Indians to abandon their own and to adopt
our habits of life while we carry victuals and clothes to
their reservations, we must compel them to work for a
subsistence as we ourselves do.
Happily for all who desire to view this momentous and profoundly interesting question with the utmost candor and intelligence, not forgetful of all humane sentiments, the question is not one that concerns merely the long or the recent past in our country. On the contrary the right, the just, the wise, the expedient, the best possible way in which the civilized whites as a people, and through their government, can and ought to deal with the original, native, and savage occupants of our territory is one of the most living and exciting and serious questions of our day. The perplexing issues on the trial of which we have had two and a half centuries of practical experience have never been settled, and are open to-day. This experience seems to have made us no wiser; it has not introduced any essentially new elements for our guidance, nor relieved the sadness and the suffering and the injustice which in-
