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5 their effects vastly more disastrous than Indian butchery.

How cruel and unfeeling the military sarcasm, that these poor people ("the fiends") must all be forced into the Reservations, their "last ditch", by the troops, and by the troops beheld these to be tangible to Civilization". what does this mean -- will not the poor creatures have been touched enough by civilization before they are dropped in their last ditch and to be more tangible?

The Commanding General tells us that he has nothing to do with the Indian affairs excepting to protect the lives of the settlers; and in the same letter, that "the Indians must all be forced into the Reservations by his troops, and by his troops be held there"; and political adherants to his policy tell us that "the Indian wars are waged only for the protection of the pioneers--that they are a great expense to the Government, and that nothing is gained by them"; but the whole of this is untrue. These wars and massacres will be the death of the pioneers; and whatever the cost of the Indian wars, they are the most profitable speculations which the government is engaged in.

Every battle that the Government fights with the Indians is sure to be a government victory. Every Indian war with the United States, no matter who is the cause of it, is a forfeiture of annuities, and who is to add up and tell us the millions on millions of profits to the Government, by annuities thus stopped?

The three massacres of the Cheyennes and Arapahos, with the butchery of the Piégans, are a gain to the government, of at least 500. millions of aces of land which the government puts into the market at Six Shillings (a dollar and a quarter) per acre; and the horses stolen in the same massacres, worth at least, 60.000 dollars.

What a spectral picture have we before us when we close our eyes, of well fed soldiers entering the wigwams of these starving and unsuspecting people, with sabres in hand splitting down the heads and mangling the bodies of women and children, crying and imploring for mercy! What a school of practice, these slaughterhouses for American Soldiers; and if all the tribes are yet to be "forced" from their countries by the troops, where are these butcheries to stop, (who can solve the problem) if not only the disgrace of such transactions, but the guilt of such wanton cruelties, is to be condoned by the people of our country?

It may be policy in a great General, wielding the swords of a great army upon a naked and defenceless people, in their own country, and their own wigwams, to stigmatize them as "fiends", though most valient fighting men take a satisfaction in magnifying their enemy. When I visited these wild and hospitable people and shook the hands of more than half a million, in their own dwelling, they certainly were not (collectively) fiends; and if they deserve the epithet at this time, it is because the raids of military, and the butcheries by the United States troops in their counties had made them such.

There are fiends in all societies,