painfully to the unpardonable negligence of the national legislature in
failing to provide a substitute for the time-honored policy which was
destroyed by the Act of 1871.

In treating the Indian question of the present day, the temptation is
strongly felt, to dwell upon the history of Indian tribes, and upon the
physical and moral characteristics of this singular race. Yet, if way be
once given to this inclination, not only will the time and space
necessary for a discussion of the present and the future of the Indian
tribes be sacrificed, but the attention of the reader will be so
overwhelmed with the multitude of names and incidents, that he will be
embarrassed rather than assisted in his understanding of the subject to
be treated. The value, for our purpose, of facts and incidents in Indian
history is not at all according to their value historically or
romantically. Indeed, such has been the fatality to the aborigines of
contact with the whites, that it may almost be said, the importance
to-day of tribes is inversely as their importance in the annals of the
country. Among the greatest figures of the past are those of bands and
confederacies that have utterly disappeared from the continent, happy
that their long, savage independence, and their brief, fierce resistance
to the encroachments of the pale-face, were not to be succeeded by a
dreary period of submission, humiliation, and dependence. Other tribes,
that but a few generations ago shook the infant colonies with terror, or
even dared to stand across the path of the Republic, and for a time
flung a shadow as of eclipse over its destiny, are now represented upon
the annuity or feeding-lists of the United States by a few score of
diseased wretches, who hang about the settlements, begging and stealing
where they can, and quarrelling like dogs over the entrails of the
beeves that are slaughtered for them. Still other tribes, once warlike
and powerful, have, by a fortunate turn of character and circumstance,
become so rich and respectable as not only to deprive them of all
romantic interest, but practically to take them out of the scope of the
Indian question. Other tribes, still having among them men whose
grandfathers besieged Detroit under Pontiac, are now resolved into
citizens of the United States, eligible for the chief-justiceship or the
presidency.

Such considerations as we have here briefly sketched suffice to show the
inexpediency of entering upon Indian hi