Nor was there any alternative to these Indian wars. It is idle folly to
speak of them as being the fault of the United States Government; and it
is even more idle to say that they could have been averted by treaty.
Here and there, under exceptional circumstances or when a given tribe
was feeble and unwarlike, the whites might gain the ground by a treaty
entered into of their own free will by the Indians, without the least
duress; but this was not possible with warlike and powerful tribes when
once they realized that they were threatened with serious encroachment
on their hunting-grounds. Moreover, looked at from the standpoint of the
ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether
the land was taken by treaty or by war. In the end the Delaware fared no
better at the hands of the Quaker than the Wampanoag at the hands of the
Puritan; the methods were far more humane in the one case than in the
other, but the outcome was the same in both. No treaty could be
satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and
civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly
as any successful war.
Our Dealings with the Indians.
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