The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 127 



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 excep 

 tional 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 threat 

 ened with serious encroachment on their hunting- 

 grounds. Moreover, looked at from the standpoint 

 of the ultimate result, there was little real differ 

 ence 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 Wam- 

 panoag 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, un 

 less it gave the land to the Americans as unreserv 

 edly as any successful war. 



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 gen 

 erous, for we have paid them many times what they 

 were entitled to; many times what we would have 



