Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/604

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584
MILITARY AND PEACE POLICY.

arms, nor even food, but in farming stock, tools, and implements.

All this so far is recognized by us as learned from past experience, with its attempts and failures, and as suggested by the wisest advisers for the future. And the practical question is forced upon us, How shall we bring about this radical change in our Indian policy, and realize for the future security for ourselves and the harmlessness and welfare of the native tribes? The aim being economic, — one of comprehensive methods and results, engaging precisely the same agencies which insure thrift and prosperity to our civilized communities, — we must enlist in its furtherance all the legal, social, and educational appliances on which we ourselves depend. The end in view is pacificatory. The measures for securing it, even those which require force, compulsion, and coercion, must be in harmony with it. The Indians must be put under the control and protection of laws, and so in conformity with our own institutions they must be made citizens as soon as possible, making and administering their own laws. Till they are capable of this privilege and responsibility, they must come under our laws, being helped as much as possible to understand and approve them, — at any rate being held to obey them. So far as these laws of our communities — national, State, municipal, or social — require temporary modification or adaptation for any body of Indians, wise administration can meet the emergency. So long as we have savages to deal with we shall need the military arm, as we still need it against some classes and in some turbulencies of our civilized communities. Real paupers — from incompetency, disability, or misfortune — are not such unknown characters among ourselves as to make it necessary that we be taught or urged to our duty of common humanity towards what must necessarily be a very large class of such in many Indian tribes. But paupers among ourselves are cared for by the more thrifty of