Show THE INDIAN TROUBLES A few significant words occur in a news dispatch today anent the minnesota indian troubles up to date the hostile indians indiana have made no attack upon white settlers there are no indications that they will do so and this bears out the fact that they will confine their hostilities to the reservation alone this is the heroic in which one of those disturbances in white communities sometimes is framed and which the enterprising reporter would cause to read something like this there is in no probability that mr i smith will disturb the neighbors byi by going to their respective abodes or either of them he will resist encroach ments upon his own property and family to the extent of fighting to the death if necessary perhaps the real and the imaginative cases are not in strict harmony but what the they y lack in this respect may be made up by reference to the absolute identity of the principle obtaining in each it should be taken into consideration that the government has all along been making allowance for the wide difference between our social and governmental system and that of the red men the land all of it and everything upon and within it was theirs by the highest title that even the civilized lawgivers know anything of that of continued possession and occupation for a time running back of all records they had to give way before civilization even as darkness is dissipated with the ca ming coming of light they were making little or no use of lands upon which the genius of destiny had decreed that fruitful fields and thriving communities and great cities should stand A little of their property just enough to amount to a foothold was purchased and paid for and then began the work of stealing sealing by various devices accompanied with such civilizing agencies az as firewater by means of which they could be made to fight among and sl slay IV themselves as well as become ee eab r victims to the whites the result vur v ur ta that the aborigines formerly guiltless guil aless and friendly became deceitful treacherous and bloodthirsty while all the time and as a result of every collision they were jostled a little further in the direction of the setting sun finally with the exception of a few desultory bands who had become emasculated and no longer had the stamina or inclination cli nation to join in the chase even it if there had been anything left laft to chase the living ones were all huddled beyond the father of waters and ana his chief tributary this was a big enough domain it gave the owners plenty of room an abundance of game unrestricted variety biety and sufficient freedom from the predatory performances of the continental pirates for a short time there soon appeared i i lot of tents which were not put up by the indians indiana upon the western bank of the missouri they increased rapidly and when one digap disappeared feared I 1 it was because a log house had taken its place A settlement once made secure it began to ramify always reaching re ching out to the west at the same am thrift the white mans saps haaf T brought colonl zere to the othet other edge of the continent and these were branching out easterly so that the proprietors of the land were literally between two fires which were slowly and steadily but with exceeding sureness narrowing the intervening gap in such cases opposition ceases to 0 o be an organized quantity ana becomes simply a desultory and spasmodic nega negative kive deviltry is rife as the legitimate offspring of desperation the indian is do doomed and he knows it As things are going and have gone he will soon be like the bison which once was as numerous as himself but a tradition not a memory for the greater part of those who have inherited the land will not have seen him at all the government at washington realizing all this and having a sincere desire to cause the scattered remnants to be in a as favorable a situation as possible has allotted then them lands in community and where an aptitude and disposition to cultivate the same was shown in severalty severally also as well as supplying them with stock implements seeds and everything needed to make the property productive it has also thrown in a i white agent here and there to act as a kind of guardian over the flook flock one whose strict honesty may frequently have been questioned but very seldom assailed in such a way as to invoke evidence the hope Is of course to diffuse a civilizing influence and bring the savages along step by step to a condition of things in which the sharp contrast between their once imperial sway and their present dependency will be somewhat mitigated if not eventually overcome altogether liberal reservations have been granted which are kept sacredly for them until some white man discovers that they are good for agricultural or mineral purposes and even then they are bought sometimes however the occupants do not want to sell they prefer to adhere to the original compact the presumption would naturally seem to be that we also would prefer to do so but it dont i generally happen that way the indian must go the minnesota trouble has already cost several lives white lives of course the red ones not being of much conse quence when matters reach such a stage it would seem to toe be high time y for the trouble to be sif sifted ted to the bot f torn tom and not let the fighting frenzy cause widespread massacre when perk per haps it might all be averted the government recognizes the indians indiana rights why not ascer ascertain whether or not these have been trampled upon or neglected before allowing the poor creatures to be wiped out of existence upon the soll soil which they are permitted to call their own |