CHAPTER XI.
THE INDIANS UNDER CIVILIZATION.
“Extinction or civilization is the alternative for those
of the Indian race living in the near future on our national
domain.” It would be well-nigh as difficult to assign this
oft-repeated sentence, as it would be one of our familiar
proverbs, to an individual authority. All past experience,
all practical wisdom for the present, all reasonable forecasting
of what may be before us compel us to face the terms
of that alternative. And even this limitation within two
conditions comes to us prejudiced by the decision already
reached by very many persons — it would be difficult to say
whether a majority or a minority among us — who, satisfied
that the Indians are incapable and intractable for the
process of civilization, accept for them the doom of extinction
as a race. This decision has been reached and avowed by
many of the most eminent and humane of our statesmen
during the whole century; it has been almost uniformly
approved by our military men; it has been adopted by vast
multitudes of those who have had the fullest and most
intimate knowledge of Indian character and life. Whether
those who hold this opinion or conviction follow it out in
their own minds with the course of measures on the part
of our Government and people which is to be engaged to
verify it and to effect the result, must be left to inference.
Those who reject and denounce this dismal decision as too
abominable and hideous even for discussion, will of course
insist that the civilization of the Indians is at all events
