.MTA2Ng.NzIzODI: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
imported>Trichie No edit summary |
imported>Trichie No edit summary |
||
Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
These 173 Piegans, to have been destroyed whilst they killed but one soldier, must have been attacked in their sleep, and without their weapons at command; and if so, could have been captured as prisoners of war, and the guilty punished. How much more this would have tended to the peace of the frontier, and comported with the honour and magnanimity of a great and invincible nation | These 173 Piegans, to have been destroyed whilst they killed but one soldier, must have been attacked in their sleep, and without their weapons at command; and if so, could have been captured as prisoners of war, and the guilty punished. How much more this would have tended to the peace of the frontier, and comported with the honour and magnanimity of a great and invincible nation | ||
It is a mistaken (though a popular) notion, that "striking these people hard", (slaughtering them indiscriminately as has been seen) is the surest mode of keeping the peace: but when the world will have learned as much of the Indian character as I have learned, they will find that such murderous and cowardly attacks are the surest means of throwing the whole frontier into the most horrible and unrelenting state of warfare. | It is a mistaken (though a popular) notion, that "striking these people hard", (slaughtering them indiscriminately as has been seen) is the surest mode of keeping the peace: but when the world will have learned as much of the Indian character as I have learned, they will find that such murderous and cowardly attacks are the surest means of throwing the whole frontier into the most horrible and unrelenting state of warfare. | ||
If I am speaking strong it is because the time has come for | If I am speaking strong it is because the time has come for speaking strong, and because my words are on the side of policy and humanity, and not of blood and butchery. I have no shame or fear in speaking plainly for an oppressed and murdered people, and who cannot speak for themselves. These assassinated people were |
Revision as of 21:44, 28 March 2020
the death struggle of these will be disastrous to all around them. We steal the Indian's lands and their hunting grounds and all that they have to subsist upon, and we are not punished; but when a few individuals amongst them, where they have no power or laws to punish, retalliate, they (and not they alone, but the innocent with the guilty) are punished with indiscrinate death---cut down with sabers and shot down with revolvers by the cavalry of our country---killed to the last man, and that by a secret and cowardly surprise!
These 173 Piegans, to have been destroyed whilst they killed but one soldier, must have been attacked in their sleep, and without their weapons at command; and if so, could have been captured as prisoners of war, and the guilty punished. How much more this would have tended to the peace of the frontier, and comported with the honour and magnanimity of a great and invincible nation It is a mistaken (though a popular) notion, that "striking these people hard", (slaughtering them indiscriminately as has been seen) is the surest mode of keeping the peace: but when the world will have learned as much of the Indian character as I have learned, they will find that such murderous and cowardly attacks are the surest means of throwing the whole frontier into the most horrible and unrelenting state of warfare. If I am speaking strong it is because the time has come for speaking strong, and because my words are on the side of policy and humanity, and not of blood and butchery. I have no shame or fear in speaking plainly for an oppressed and murdered people, and who cannot speak for themselves. These assassinated people were