The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 129 



warped, perverse, and silly morality which would 

 forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole 

 continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing 

 civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome 

 thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the 

 plea that these continents should be reserved for 

 the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life x was 

 but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and 

 ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom 

 they held joint ownership. It is as idle to apply 

 to savages the rules of international morality which 

 obtain between stable and cultured communities, 

 as it would be to judge the fifth-century English 

 conquest of Britain by the standards of to-day. 

 Most fortunately, the hard, energetic, practical men 

 .who do the rough pioneer work of civilization in 

 barbarous lands, are not prone to false sentimental 

 ity. The people who are, are the people who stay 

 at home. Often these stay-at-homes are too selfish 

 and indolent, too lacking in imagination, to under 

 stand the race-importance of the work which is done 

 by their pioneer brethren in wild and distant lands ; 

 and they judge them by standards which would 

 only be applicable to quarrels in their own town 

 ships and parishes. Moreover, as each new land 

 grows old, it misjudges the yet newer lands, as 

 once it was itself misjudged. The home-staying 

 Englishman of Britain grudges to the Africander 

 his conquest of Matabeleland ; and so the home- 

 staying American of the Atlantic States dislikes 

 to see the Western miners and cattlemen win for 



