WHAT TEAPPEES SAY OF THE APACHES. 353 



I have heard "all about them" from learned lecturers I 

 went as escort to some ancient ladies ; I have read official 

 reports I have had to read them that told " all about 

 them " ; I have been informed that several tourists have 

 written " all about them " in their books ; I have talked 

 with old mountaineers, old pioneersmen who had traded 

 and travelled with them, fought with and killed them, 

 married them and had children by them, or most of these 

 things Kit Carson, Paul Weaver, Joe Walker, Jim Bent, 

 the two Roubedeaux, Cherokee Bill, old Maxwell but 

 their names are legion : they did not profess to tell me 

 "all about them." 



Thus sayeth ye ancient trapper : Apaches are cruel, 

 cowardly, skulking, murdering thieves; the only good ones 

 are dead ones. Government should give five dollars a 

 scalp reward money, and the pesky varmints would be 

 wiped off the face of the earth. Government is a parcel of 

 soft-headed, maundering old women, with their Indian 

 agents, their missionaries, their Quaker peace commis- 

 sioners. Should just like to see old Government making 

 tracks through a prickly-pear plain with a hundred of the 

 howling devils after him for his scalp. 



Ye withdrawing-room theorist propoundeth : The Apaches 

 are unjustly and shamefully used; they are full of noble 

 traits ; they are the rightful owners of the country, defending 

 their homes, their altars, and the sacred ashes of their sires 

 against unprincipled miscreants, whose thirst for gold, whose 

 greed for gain, whose contempt for order, right, and religion 

 has led them to violate the principles of Christianity and the 

 laws of God and man. 



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