ing and vengeance have been returned upon them in full measure. Twelve white persons certainly—some intelligent estimates assure us twenty—have died in battle, ambush, or torture, for every single Indian life that has been extinguished in the long-contested struggle between the races on this continent. And the cost of killing each Indian has been set at a million dollars. As to their extermination in this process, our most careful authorities tell us that there are as many Indians now on our so-called domain as there were when the whites first came. The relations of the whites with the aborigines on this continent having begun in wrong, have been resented and resisted by them, after their own modes of wile and warfare, to such effect as to persuade the whites that they had to deal with incarnate fiends. This conviction, which has been stamped afresh upon the dreads and perils of those who have advanced our frontiers over each successive western valley, river, and mountain range, has perpetuated the belief that the right of civilization against barbarism involves the right of extermination. Yet humanity and righteousness protest against that gigantic outrage. Still, there is only one effectual alternative to extermination,—and that is the assertion by the natives of the rights and privileges of civilization. From them must come the evidence that they are not wild beasts, prowling through thickets and plains, but entitled to the rights of human beings,—to homes and fields of their own.
