When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property the other
Pawnees do not trouble to seek _him_ out; they kill any white person
that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s
heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value
of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in
addition, _thirteen times_[13] the value of that property into a fund
for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the
best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of
man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right _that the
innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty_, and that it is
better that 90 and 9 innocent should suffer than that one guilty
person should escape.
We all know that Dr. Ament did not bring suspected persons into a duly
organized court and try them by just and fair Christian and civilized
methods, but proclaimed his “conditions,” and collected damages from the
innocent and the guilty alike, without any court proceedings at all.[14]
That he himself, and not the villagers, made the “conditions,” we learn
from his letter of November 13th, already quoted from--the one in which
he remarked that, upon _that_ occasion he brought no soldiers with him.
The italics are mine:
After our _conditions_ were known many villagers came of their own
accord and brought their money with them.
Not all, but “many.” The Board really believes that those hunted and
harried paupers out there were not only willing to strip themselves to
pay Boxer damages, whether they owed them or not, but were sentimentally
eager to do it. Mr. Ament says, in his letter: “The villagers were
extremely grateful because I brought no foreign soldiers, and were glad
to settle on the terms proposed.” Some of those people know more about
theology than they do about human nature. I do not remember encountering
even a Christian who was “glad” to pay money he did not owe; and as for
a Chinaman doing it, why, dear me, the thing is unthinkable. We have all
seen Chinamen, many Chinamen, but not that kind. It is a new kind: an
invention of the Board--and “soldiers.”