25 The Winning of the West 



and its occasional leaning to the policy of the senti- 

 mental humanitarians ; and we have often promised 

 what was impossible to perform ; but there has been 

 little wilful wrong-doing. Our government almost 

 always tries to act fairly by the tribes ; the govern- 

 mental agents (some of whom have been dishonest, 

 and others foolish, but who, as a class, have been 

 greatly traduced), in their reports, are far more apt 

 to be unjust to the whites than to the reds; and the 

 Federal authorities, though unable to prevent much 

 of the injustice, still did check and control the white 

 borderers very much more effectually than the In- 

 dian sachems and war-chiefs controlled their young 

 braves. The tribes were warlike and blood-thirsty, 

 jealous of each other and of the whites; they 

 claimed the land for their hunting grounds, but 

 their claims all conflicted with one another; their 

 knowledge of their own boundaries was so indefinite 

 that they were always willing, for inadequate com- 

 pensation, to sell land to which they had merely the 

 vaguest title; and yet, when once they had received 

 the goods, were generally reluctant to make over 

 even what they could; they coveted the goods and 

 scalps of the whites, and the young warriors were 

 always on the alert to commit outrages when they 

 could do it with impunity. On the other hand, the 

 evil-disposed whites regarded the Indians as fair 

 game for robbery and violence of any kind ; and the 

 far larger number of well-disposed men, who would 

 not willingly wrong any Indian, were themselves 

 maddened by the memories of hideous injuries re- 



