5 14 The Book of Woodcraft 



only to deceive and to be broken; in which the red hand 

 of war has rested most hea\ily upon shrieking mother 

 and wailing babe. 



If from this history, the Caucasian can extract any 

 cause of self -laudation I am glad of it: speaking as a cen- 

 sor who has read the e\'idence with as much impartiahty as 

 could be expected from one who started in with the sincere 

 con^dction that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, 

 and that the only use to make of him was that of a fertilizer; 

 and who, from stud}ing the documents in the case, and 

 listening little by Httle to the savage's own story, has ar- 

 rived at the conclusion that perhaps Pope Paul III was 

 right when he solemnly declared that the natives of the 

 New World had souls and must be treated as human beings, 

 and admitted to the sacraments when found ready to re- 

 ceive them, I feel it to be my duty to say that the Apache 

 has found himself in the very best of company when he 

 committed any atrocity, it matters not how vile, and that 

 his complete history, if it could be -uTitten by himself, would 

 not be any special cause of self-complacency to such white 

 men as believe in a just God, who will visit the sins of par- 

 ents upon their children, even to the third and fourth 

 generation. 



We have become so thoroughly Pecksniffian in our self- 

 laudation, in our exaltation of our own virtues, that we 

 have become grounded in the error of imagining that the 

 American savage is more cruel in his war customs than 

 other nations of the earth have been; this I have already 

 intimated, in a misconception, and statistics, for such as 

 care to dig them out, will prove that I am right. The 

 Assyrians cut their conquered foes Kmb from limb; the 

 Israehtes spared neither parent nor child; the Romans 

 crucified head downward the gladiators who revolted under 

 Spartacus; even in the civilized England of the past century, 



