We made treaties with the Indians and broke them. In
turn men such as these ignorant savages might well be expected to
break their treaties also; and they did. Unhappily our Indian
policy at that time was one of mingled ferocity and wheedling.
The Indians did not understand us any more than we did them. When
we withdrew some of the old frontier posts from the old
hunting-range, the action was construed by the tribesmen as an
admission that we feared them, and they acted upon that idea. In
one point of view they had right with them, for now we were
moving out into the last of the great buffalo country. Their war
was one of desperation, whereas ours was one of conquest, no
better and no worse than all the wars of conquest by which the
strong have taken the possessions of the weak.
Our Army at the close of the Civil War and at the beginning of
the wars with the Plains tribes was in better condition than it
has ever been since that day. It was made up of the soundest and
best-seasoned soldiers that ever fought under our flag; and at
that time it represented a greater proportion of our fighting
strength than it ever has before or since.
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