lemma. As a first step toward an understanding of
his character we must get at his standpoint of morality. As a child he
is not brought up.... From the dawn of intelligence his own will is his
law. There is no right and no wrong to him.... No dread of punishment
restrains him from any act that boyish fun or fury may prompt. No
lessons inculcating the beauty and sure reward of goodness or the
hideousness and certain punishment of vice are ever wasted on him. The
men by whom he is surrounded, and to whom he looks as models for
his future life, are great and renowned just in proportion to their
ferocity, to the scalps they have taken, or the thefts they have
committed. His earliest boyish memory is probably a dance of rejoicing
over the scalps of strangers, all of whom he is taught to regard as
enemies. The lessons of his mother awaken only a desire to take his
place as soon as possible in fight and foray. The instruction of his
father is only such as is calculated to fit him best to act a prominent
part in the chase, in theft, and in murder.... Virtue, morality,
generosity, honor, are words not only absolutely without significance
to him, but are not accurately translatable, into any Indian language on
the Plains."

These are sterner, less kindly, less philosophic words than Marcy's,
but they keenly outline the duty of the Army on the frontier. We made
treaties with the Indians and broke them. In turn men such as these
ignorant savages might well be expected to break their treaties also;
and they did. Unhappily our Indian policy at that time was one of
mingled ferocity and wheedling. The Indians did not understand us any
more than we did them. When we withdrew some of the old frontier posts
from the old hunting-range, the action was construed by the tribesmen as
an admission that we feared them, and they acted upon that idea. In one
point of view they had right with them, for now we were moving out into
the last of the great buffalo country. Their war was one of desperation,
whereas ours was one of conquest, no better and no worse than all the
wars of conquest by which the strong have taken the possessions of the
weak.

Our Army at the close of the Civil War and at the beginning of the wars
with the Plains tribes was in better condition than it has ever been
since that day. It was made up of the soundest and best-seasoned
soldiers that ever fought under our flag; and at that time it
represented a greater proportion of o