Abraham Lincoln one afternoon sat listening to the members of a
committee arguing. The next day he heard them arguing _more_ without
arriving anywhere. In a pause, he said, “I am reminded of old Zeke
Williams out in my home town. Zeke was the finest rifle shot with his
Brown Bess in those parts. One day he took his young son out hunting
with him. They approached a tree. Said Zeke, ‘Boy, shake that ’ar tree.
They’s a squirrel in it.’ The lad shook the tree, the father blazed
away, but nothing happened. Said Zeke, ‘Shake that ’ar tree agin.’ The
boy obeyed. The father blazed away and _still_ nothing happened. The
father brought his gun down from his shoulder and almost wept as he
said, ‘I must be gettin’ old. I can’t hit ’em no more.’ The son was
very sorry for his father. So he went and looked the tree all over.
Seeing no sign of a squirrel, he came over to his father and gazed
intently into the old man’s face. ‘Why pap,’ exclaimed the boy, ‘That
’ar ain’t no squirrel in the tree. That ’ar a _louse_ on your eyebrow’.”
If Lincoln were alive today, I fear he’d discover many lice on our
eyebrows--many fancies about our past that are contrary to reality. And
nowhere would he find more than in our mistaken notions of the Indian
struggles in our West. Soldiers fighting Indians! That’s what the
school histories lead us to see. We get the feeling that the soldier
was a bloodthirsty fellow who loved to go out before breakfast and kill
a few redmen for pastime. The truth of the matter is that he was the
best and almost the only friend the Indian had. The reason for this
relationship is natural and simple. The soldier had no personal gain to
get from the West. He wanted nothing that belonged to the redman. If he
were out for greed, as the settlers, traders, trappers and adventurers
too often were, he wouldn’t have been a soldier at his paltry wage.
And as a hardy fellow, he appreciated the good points in other hardy
fellows like the Indians. So let us look at real scenery and not at
lice for a few minutes. Here is the tale of the Modocs.
The Modocs had always been a peaceable tribe, often assisting the
whites in their undertakings, and even going so far as to help save a
California town from fire. The government had made a treaty with them.
As usual it violated it. All that these Indians asked was to be moved
to a small strip of land, no good to anybody. General Canby, known as
the Indian’s friend, tried to make the Indian Agents and Washington
see the point of view of these redmen and begged and entreated that
their simple request be granted. But the powers stubbornly refused.
The Indians, denied and double-crossed, went on the warpath. The
soldiers were ordered to fight them. In the ensuing engagements many
of them were killed. But that was not all. General Canby, Dr. Thomas
and other soldiers, in trying to carry out the government’s unjust
orders, were killed also. The very men who had tried to avert injustice
and bloodshed, were butchered. Dr. Thomas’ son has always claimed
that the government murdered his father. But the tragic irony of this
whole affair is that after all this debauch of human life and craze
of injustice, General Canby’s advice was finally heeded. Those that
were left of the Modocs, were transported to where they wanted to go
in the first place. But General Canby and many another good soldier
and Indian were dead. This story does not stand alone by any means.
That of the Nez Perce’s is even worse. This tribe was more peaceful,
high-minded and friendly than the Modocs. From the time that it had
helped the Lewis and Clark expedition, way back after our Revolution,
it had held uninterrupted good-will with the whites. But the government
defrauded these Indians of a little strip of poor land where they
wanted to go. They asked to be taken there. Chief Joseph, handsome,
intelligent, upright, patiently pleaded his cause. General Howard
naturally interceded and begged the government to let them go. But he
also like Canby was met with curt refusal, over and over again. After
long drawn-out insults by our government, the Nez Perce’s rebelled, and
Howard was ordered to fight them. An officer and thirty-three of our
soldiers were killed in the first action. Then began a chase through
three territories. In one instance, so few were the troops that a
general had to use a rifle himself and was severely wounded. The tribe
was finally captured after much loss of life to white and redman. The
government, contrary to General Miles’ recommendation, transported
what remained of the tribe to an unhealthful region where they quickly
perished. And that was our way of disposing of the Nez Perces. The Ute
uprising of 1879 was in principle a repetition of these events. Major
Thornburg and a large part of his command were killed because of the
stubbornness of an Indian Agent.
Let’s look for a moment at another tribe. In 1870 the Apaches, the most
subtle redmen we’ve ever dealt with, broke from their reservations and
went upon the warpath. The cause as usual was our injustice. Colonel
George Crook with a small force was sent against them. He was the
kind of man who believed in a square word rather than a round bullet.
He was in every way (unlike his name) the kind of man you’d want your
boy to be like. But he faced a racking problem. The Apache country
in the rugged Sierras was one of the toughest spots anybody could
search, and when you added to it a wily Indian, ready to snare you at
every turn, you had something that looked hopeless. It meant that the
soldier had to master the country, know the valleys, streams, canyons,
water holes, and unexplored mountain ranges; and hang doggedly on the
trail, hour by hour, day by day through exhausting privation and bitter
disappointment. Crook trailed the Apaches, but not with menace or
threats. With a small escort he sought out the chiefs, ever imperilling
his life by exposing himself. After months of effort he succeeded in
getting a few of the chiefs to come in for a talk. Little by little his
strong personality and shining integrity led them to listen to him.
More chieftains came in. At length they talked to him freely, and he
in turn saw that they were well cared for. He offered them forgiveness
for any past misdeeds and urged a life of peace. Slowly they began
to believe in him. At the end of six years of utmost patience he
had calmed them, brought them into the reservations and made them
contented--without bloodshed.
But then the Sioux uprising called him and his troops away to the
north, because of the smallness of the army. Crook, a general now,
tried to round up the Sioux with two thousand soldiers, whom he had
drained the west to get. Conditions there wouldn’t permit him to use
his Apache methods. Even under his able leadership he was nearly
trapped and reduced to starvation. All he could do was to make his
escape and let the Indians roam on. The Sioux were too strong for his
puny force. Meanwhile the Apaches were left to the control of Indian
Agents, who mishandled, defrauded and abused them. So awful did the
conditions become, that even in the east the President felt obliged to
send General Crook back to the Apaches in 1882. There Crook, after six
years’ absence, found his previous work had been worse than undone. The
Agents had ejected the Indians from their reservations because silver
had been found there, had thrown them into prison to languish for
months without trial, starved them, stolen their crops and in general
treated them like cattle. Crook set himself to win them back by his old
methods. But it was a monstrous task now, since the Indian had been
infuriated afresh and had lost faith in all whites. In his old, bold
way Crook set out through the trails to investigate complaints and find
out the causes. Fortunately the Indians recognized and remembered
him. They told him stories that would have wrung pity from a hardened
criminal. But the way they met him--a real friend and champion after
all these years of cruelty--was pathetic in its child-like appeal.
The faces of the old men brightened and the squaws wept when they saw
him again. The chieftain, Old Pedro, with dimmed eyes spoke to him
pitifully. His words were taken down at the time and here they are:
“When you, General Crook, were here, whenever you said a thing, we
knew it was true, and we kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was
here, our women and children were happy and our young people grew up
contented. And I remember Brown, Randall, and the other officers who
treated us kindly and were our friends. I used to be happy. Now I am
all the time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where is old Colonel John
Green, and Randall, and those other good officers, and what has become
of them? Where have they gone? Why don’t they come back? And the young
men all say the same thing’.”
That was how the Indian in his simple faith, trusted and regarded the
soldier, who was too often unjustly sent out to fight him. And how do
you suppose the soldier felt when he had to? Certainly he could have
no relish for such dismal, perilous work. Anyway Crook and his small
command kept up their exhausting efforts to avoid bloodshed. But all
the while the Indian Agent Ring was sending out newspaper accounts
of murder and depredations by the Indians, in order to involve Crook
in a fight, which would drive the Indian away from the land on which
the agents wished to profiteer. These stories Crook investigated and
wherever he could, gave the lie to the rumor. Despite this knifing in
the back, he again restored peace and contentment to the Apache--after
two years.
And so I could recount for many evenings true incidents like this. In
five years one regiment had sixty-seven battles and skirmishes and
another marched sixty-four hundred miles. In the first six years after
the Civil War, the army experienced two hundred three actions with the
redmen. And Indian troubles didn’t dwindle out until over 30 years
after the Civil War. But the uphill work with the redman was by no
means all that the soldier had to encounter. Between 1886 and 1895, he
was called upon to restore order in civil uprisings throughout every
state and territory in our country to the number of three hundred
twenty-eight. And he accomplished these tasks with almost no bloodshed.
The show of trained force was enough, small as it was. But during all
this time when the soldier was enduring the hardships of intense heat
and cold, and running untold risks for his nation, his work was little
understood or appreciated. Once Congress tried to reduce the army to
ten thousand, which would have brought on more slaughter, especially to
the whites, and prolonged the Indian troubles indefinitely. Fortunately
the reduction didn’t succeed. But something else did. No appropriation
for the pay of the army for the fiscal year 1877-78 was made by
Congress, and this right after the Custer fight. The soldier without
his meager wage had to borrow money at interest, in order to live--to
go on--go on enduring rude conditions and the hazards of life and
death. There was a faction back east which believed the Indian should
be exterminated. There was another which believed the Indian was right
and should be left alone. There were very few who realized that there
were good Indians and bad Indians just as there are good and bad white
men. When the soldier lost battles, he was investigated. When he won
some, he was branded as a butcher. Meanwhile the settlers were crowding
in and had to be protected, and the Indian Agent Ring was forcing
Crook, Canby, Howard, Miles and many others into fights they wished to
avoid.
But the soldiers’ position was unfortunate mostly because his force was
not large enough to awe the Indian into peace without fighting. For
no one more than the Indian respected _size_. He was an expert scout
and had a keen eye for numbers. One hundred thousand soldiers would
doubtless have cut the losses in half. And had the government used the
Indian with common decency, they would have been cut to nothing. We
talk a lot about the violation of Belgium and we are justly enraged at
the Germans. But the Germans at least didn’t murder their soldiers in
addition to their enemies. Are there lice on our eyebrows? Are there
sins of our own? Greater sins?
_XI_