| 142 also that they "have only done substantially what he would have done himself under like circumstances."
Mr. Phillips says that it is a reproach to the nation and to religion, that, with all our resources of civilization, we have lived two hundred years close to the Indians, and have mainly given them only our vices. He continues:
"We have made war on him as a pretext to steal his lands. We have trodden under foot the rules of modern warfare. We have cheated him out of one hunting-ground by compelling him to accept another, and have robbed him of this last by driving him to madness and resistance."
Reverend I. S. Kallock recently lectured in San Francisco and arraigned the Indian policy of the Government as being of the worst possible kind. He said that it is wonderful what a love the Christian philanthropist has for the heathen-those at a distance, but the real article at his door is another thing. He admitted, which all do, that the red man is treacherous, revengeful, and sanguinary, but that our dealings with him have only made him more so, while all our efforts at improvement have been feeble and insufficient, and our treaties have only been blunders.
The New York Sun says that the war has been caused by "treachery, dishonesty, and incompetency," growing out of "the gross violations by the whites of treaty stipulations." Another writes as follows:
"The Indians are fighting for their rights. Put yourself in his place and would you not fight? Suppose that your neighbor comes upon your land and takes possession of your property, would you not remonstrate; and, if necessary, also do more than remonstrate? If you should pound him for his evil deeds, and then for it the law should punish you, or exile you and confiscate your property, what would you think of it? So the Indians have defended themselves, just as any other nation or people would have done under like circumstances. But now the Government invades the Sioux territory to punish them for defending their property or rights, or for doing just as other people would be expected to do in the same condition."
It is evident to us, as it is to all men, that the Government really admitted the rights of the red men to that country when it last year essayed to, or made a show of protecting it from the invasion of the whites, and when it made overtures for a purchase from White Cloud and his chiefs. But when it failed to get it on its own terms it ceased its show of protection and let the invaders do as they pleased, and the reds are slain for maintaining what they suppose to be, and what the Government has conceded to be, their rights.
If, instead of being beaten, General Custer had succeeded and had slain thousands of Indians it would have been called a "glorious victory;" but as the reverse happened and hundreds of whites fell, it is called a "massacre," and the cry is for "extermination."
But, says the humane man, this should not be; punish the transgressors on both sides and make a settlement as impartially as we would if the
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