As a matter of fact, the lands we have won from the Indians have been
won as much by treaty as by war; but it was almost always war, or else
the menace and possibility of war, that secured the treaty. In these
treaties we have been more than just to the Indians; we have been
abundantly generous, for we have paid them many times what they were
entitled to; many times what we would have paid any civilized people
whose claim was as vague and shadowy as theirs. By war or threat of war,
or purchase we have won from great civilized nations, from France,
Spain, Russia, and Mexico, immense tracts of country already peopled by
many tens of thousands of families; we have paid many millions of
dollars to these nations for the land we took; but for every dollar thus
paid to these great and powerful civilized commonwealths, we have paid
ten, for lands less valuable, to the chiefs and warriors of the red
tribes. No other conquering and colonizing nation has ever treated the
original savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the
United States. Nor is the charge that the treaties with the Indians have
been broken, of weight in itself; it depends always on the individual
case.
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