but with such mitigating circumstances as the case admitted. Goods and money were freely given to procure assent by temporary gratification, and the future support of the tribes. was assumed, so far as they required aid, as a just return for the enforced abandonment of their lands.

It has been computed that the Government of the United States has paid, or engaged to pay, to the tribes of the whole country about two hundred millions of dollars for their lands. Much of this is invested and the interest paid them annually for their support.

They are treated as far as possible as independent communities. They govern themselves with entire freedom within the limits assigned them, and no force is applied to oblige them to change their traditional habits if they keep the peace and carry out the provisions of the treaties. This is both chivalrous and kind; but it has many unfortunate results. For the most part they have few of the qualities necessary to preserve them from degradation when deprived of the excitements and stimulus to self-preservation of their ancient life. Their few rude and barbarous virtues mostly disappear when in contact with, or dependent on, the whites. They readily receive some of the worst vices of civilization while its virtues are unattractive and incomprehensible to them. In this state of independent dependence, so to speak, they are removed from elevating influences while subjected to many that are demoralizing. It is quite impossible to keep abandoned whites wholly away from them; it is practically impossible to control government agencies among them so completely that its intentions shall be always fully carried out, and still more impossible to prevent the intrusion and occasional violent deeds of unscrupulous men on the borders of civilized society -or outside of them-that exasperate the tribes and excite them to fearful retaliation on the innocent. Above all, the independent condition leaves them under the control of their naturally fierce and bloody passions. The slavery to

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which the Spaniards subjected the Mexicans and Peruvians was, in some aspects, preferable to this liberty to remain in primitive barbarism-after having lost primitive virtues—and to add to it civilized vices.

The Indian Policy of France and Great Britain, in Canada, was different and seems, in some respects, more successful. They have been left there with less liberty, and more stringent regulations against evil white influence have been combined with more effort to overcome their distaste for civilized habits; but the numbers there have been few compared with those in the United States, and, for the most part, from various causes, they have been less fierce and intractable. The difficulties in the way of a satisfactory solution of the Indian Question have proved really insurmountable. The liberty allowed them has constantly been abused, and an Indian war has been of almost annual occurrence since settlement began to pass the Missouri River. The army required to subdue and police them has cost uncounted millions, and many thousand lives have been lost. The settlers subject to their attacks have very naturally been greatly exasperated at their bloody brutality and would wish them mercilessly exterminated, while those who consider the wrongs almost inevitably done them criticise the Indian Policy from the opposite point of view.

It is not easy to see how so intractable a race of several hundred thousand could have been more generously treated under all the circumstances, nor how the Indian Policy could have been so altered as to obviate the difficulties of the situation without doing extreme violence to the Indian nature. The means that were at hand to influence them have been employed; all possible liberty has been allowed them, and when their ferocity has broken forth in war they have been chastised only so far as was necessary to restore peace and induce them to keep it. The character of the race must have made any policy a failure which sought their well-being as civilized communities would understand it.

The filling up of the Pacific Slope, the vast Rocky Mountain region and the Western Plains with a civilized population, must make a change in this policy inevitable at no distant day. The idea of a real independence can not be maintained when liberty to remain savages would mean placing adjacent settlements at the mercy of their bloody barbarism. To constrain them to retire to reservations, to lead a quiet and peaceable life, and to learn the arts of civilization will be essential to the safety of the growing population of the Great West. This change will naturally be as quiet and gradual as possible; but, ultimately, their destiny is to accept civilization or to be punished into annihilation. This, the safety and welfare of far larger numbers and much more important interests than their own will absolutely demand.

Between 1830 and 1850 the southern tribes, and a part of the northern, were partly persuaded and partly forced to exchange their lands east of the Mississippi for a remarkably fine region-the Indian Territory-beyond the then borders of civilization. Their removal was accomplished at the cost of the United States, and annual funds for their support provided. The southern tribes had been so long and closely connected with the whites that they were able to adopt many of the habits of an agricultural population. The result has not, apparently, been a failure, and it indicates the probable future of the race. While a vast territory remained unoccupied they were interfered with very little; but the plains are already largely settled, and a civilized population is crowding into the fertile valleys and basins and opening mines in the various ranges of the Rocky Mountain plateau. As in the Valley formerly, the tribes of this region now resist encroachment by repeated bloody outbreaks. It is not believed that the whole number of Indians within the present area of the United States is less than the same area contained three hundred years ago. There will soon be no more room for the Wild Hunter, and stern necessity will require that he forget

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his distaste for labor and adopt the habits of the farmer. The inevitable fate of the tribes of the Dakota race and the Pacific Slope is to imitate the Cherokees, Choctaws and Creeks of the Indian Territory, and their descendants will ultimately become citizens of the Republic. On the whole, the Indian Policy of the country may be designated as just, forbearing and considerate.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HEROIC PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT.

By the time that the sparks of Pontiac's War were completely extinguished a fair acquaintance with the upper part of the Ohio valley had been gained by various English, or Anglo-American explorers. Dr. Thomas Walker had penetrated to the heart of Kentucky in 1747 and again in 1758. The contest with the French and then the Indians, the negotiations of British and colonial agents, and the wanderings of English traders south of Lake Erie, had made Ohio and Western Pennsylvania familiar ground. In 1766, a party headed by Capt. James Smith visited the lower valleys of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, tracing them to the Ohio. In the same year Findlay, Harrod and others wandered over other parts of Kentucky.

In June, 1769, Daniel Boone and others penetrated to Kentucky. There was danger from the Indians and some of the party were killed, but Boone remained hunting and studying Kentucky three years; much of the time alone. A skillful hunter, more than a match for the Indians in their own crafty ways, and delighted with this beautiful region-it was not a "dark and bloody ground" to him, but a Land of Promise.

On the 9th of March, 1769, a petition of the "Mississippi Company," signed by George Washington among others, was presented to the English Board of Trade asking for two and a half million acres of land in Ohio. It was not granted until Franklin's paper on "The Ohio Settlement" had interested the Government in the scheme. The king signed the grant, August 14, 1772. In 1769, Tennessee received its first permanent settlers. Previously to this,