80 THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND THE INDIANS. 



depicted by the settler on the western plains, is 

 simply a bloodthirsty fiend, without one single redeeming 

 good quality: indeed, it used, as we have said, to be 

 a common saying on the frontier, that " the only good 

 Indian is a dead Indian." 



It will therefore perhaps hardly surprise the reader 

 if we venture, after consulting almost every available 

 authority upon this subject, to adopt something like 

 the mean between these two extremes; and while 

 refusing to be blind to their many faults, still to 

 recognise the many unquestionably fine qualities of 

 this remarkable people. 



That the Indians have had much to complain of, as 

 the eastern people assert, there can be no manner of 

 doubt; most of the treaties made with them by the 

 United States Government being treated as so much 

 waste paper by the western people: also where the 

 treaties stipulated (as they generally did) for furnish- 

 ing the Indians with goods, or rations it is admitted 

 on all hands that but a very small proportion of what 

 was justly their due ever reached them; all the rest 

 being fraudulently made away with by dishonest agents, 

 contractors, and others. It is however but justice to 

 the U.S. Government to observe that the treasury, 

 generally, paid for these supplies upon an equitable 

 and even liberal scale. This would however be no 

 defence in law to the plea set up by the Indians; for 

 the United States were responsible for the wrongful 

 acts of their agents, and were manifestly bound to 

 see that the proper parties were paid whatever was 

 due to them. 



It would be impossible however to enter into the 

 merits of such questions in these pages ; we shall there- 



