128 The Winning of the West 



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 na 

 tions, 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. 

 Many of the treaties were kept by the whites and 

 broken by the Indians; others were broken by the 

 whites themselves; and sometimes those who broke 

 them did very wrong indeed, and sometimes they 

 did right. No treaties, whether between civilized 

 nations or not, can ever be regarded as binding in 

 perpetuity ; with changing conditions, circumstances 

 may arise which render it not only expedient, but 

 imperative and honorable, to abrogate them. 



Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by 

 armed conquest, or, as was actually the case, by 

 a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little 

 so long as the land was won. It was all-important 

 that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization 

 and in the interests of mankind. It is indeed a 



