as been incited by the forbearance of the government to
increased depredations. On the contrary, the history of the past three
years has shown a steady decline in the number of robberies and murders
reported on the frontier.

If a humane consideration of the exposed condition of our frontier
settlements requires the continuance of the policy of buying off the
hostile and dangerous tribes, it is also true that the argument from
economy equally favors this action on the part of the government.
Expensive as is the Indian service as at present conducted in the
interest of peace, it costs far less than fighting. What would be the
expense of a general Indian war, which should seek the complete
subjugation of the tribes which we have described as potentially
hostile, it is impossible to compute within a hundred millions of
dollars; but it would undoubtedly reach an aggregate not much short of
that of the year of largest preparations and largest operations during
the rebellion. Does this seem extravagant, impossible? Words of truth
and soberness on such a subject surely might be expected from a
commission comprising such men as Gens. Sherman, Harney, Augur, and
Terry of the regular army of the United States. Yet these officers
united in a report rendered to the President on the 7th of January,
1868, in which they use the following language in reference to the
"Chivvington massacre" and the Cheyenne war of 1864:--

"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the
government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration
and death to the border settlements. During the spring and
summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were
withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the
Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's
campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians
was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been
killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece,
while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of
our border settlers had been butchered, and their property
destroyed."

This was the experience of the United States in a contest with an Indian
tribe numbering perhaps four thousand men, women, and children, and able
to bring into the field not one-fifth as many warriors as the Sioux
bands of to-day. Not to go back to wars waged with tribes now subjugated
or extin