n war would break. No
note of recall would avert their doom. Long before friendly runners
could reach them, the war-whoop would be in their ears; and alone,
unfriended, undefended, unaided, they would perish, as hundreds and
thousands of our countrymen have perished, at the hands of the
infuriated savages. But it is not alone the solitary ranchmen who would
be swept away on the first onset of Indian attack. Scores of valleys up
which population has been steadily creeping would be instantly
abandoned; streams that now, from source to mouth, resound the stroke of
the pioneer's axe, would be left desolate on the first rumor of war; a
hundred outlying settlements would disappear in a night, as the tidings
of outbreak and massacre were borne along by hurrying fugitives. As the
blood retreats, on the signal of danger, from the extremities to the
heart, so would population retire, terror-struck and precipitate, from
the frontier on the first shock of war. Towns, even, would be
abandoned; and the frightened inhabitants, men, women, and children,
cumbered with household stuff and overdriven stock, would crowd within
the shelter of garrisons hardly adequate for their defence.

There could be but one plea on which such considerations as these might
be disregarded; and that would be the plea that such forbearance and
indulgence on the part of the United States towards the savages only
encouraged them to increased insolence and incited them to fresh
outrages, rendering the situation less and less tolerable, and in the
end involving greater sacrifice of life than would a prompt vindication
of the authority of the government, once for all, however disastrous in
the immediate result it might prove to existing settlements. If the
policy of temporizing which has been described does indeed only serve at
the last to aggravate the evil, and by a false appearance of peace to
draw within the reach of Indian massacre larger numbers of whites, then
it is plainly the duty of the government to recall, as far as may be,
its citizens from the exposed frontier, and, at whatever expense of
blood and treasure, make issue with the savages, and forever close the
question by the complete conquest and reduction of all the hostile or
dangerous tribes. But no assumption could be farther from the facts of
the case than that the effect of lenity has been to increase the sum of
Indian outrage. There is no _scintilla_ of evidence to show that any
savage tribe h