er, that men who are contemplating things so different as are the
Eastern philanthropist and the Western settler, when Indians are spoken
of, should imagine that they disagree as to the policy of the
government, and come to entertain contempt or repugnance for each other,
while, in fact, on an honest statement of a given case, neither would
dissent in the slightest degree from the views of the other? If there
is, then, such a liability to confusion and misapprehension in the
discussion of the Indian question, we may be allowed to insist strongly
upon the necessity of the distinction indicated.

* * * * *

The actually or potentially hostile tribes of the United States number,
on a rough computation suited to the rudeness of the definition,
sixty-four thousand. It is these only which we have to treat under the
first division of our question,--What shall be done with the Indian as
an obstacle to the national progress? This number of sixty-four thousand
is made up as follows: The actually depredating bands, North-west and
South-west, probably have not exceeded, during the past year, seven
thousand, mainly Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches. The tribes with which
these bands are directly and intimately connected contain about twenty
thousand, including the marauders. There are further included in this
calculation tribes and bands, numbering in the aggregate about
forty-four thousand, which are now generally at peace.

It will be seen that the number which we have taken for the potentially
hostile Indians is many times greater than the number of the actually
hostile. Yet, on the other hand, we have not intended to embrace all
those tribes which might be exasperated to the point of resistance by a
reckless disregard of treaties on the part of the government, or by a
series of wanton acts of abuse on the part of white settlers. There is a
line beyond which no man or people may safely be pressed; and there are
few bands of Indians, East or West, however contemptible in numbers or
character, which, if wronged and trampled on, might not in their
indignant despair teach their oppressors a lesson at which the world
would shudder. We are contemplating no such possibilities. We are
assuming that the government will, as it has generally done in the
past, respect treaty obligations, and that the intercourse of the
Indians with their white neighbors will be marked by only such sporadic
acts of individual wro