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Show 10 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. and leading them into the sunlight of a higher life, in unveiling to their benighted vision the benefits of civilization and the blessings of a peace-ful Christianity, I cannot for the life of me perceive the propriety or the ef6cacy of employing the military instead of the civil departments, mlless it is intended to adopt the Mohammedan motto, and proclaim to these people LLDeath or the Koran." If the mass of our people desire peaceful relations with our Indian tribes, meaIi to continue to reoomize their natnral rights. as our fathers have done, and do not desire th& violent exterminaxion,' then I submit the peaceful and therefore the civil and not the military agencies of the gorGrneut are better adapted to swme the desired ends.- Blight follows the sword as surely as desolation sits in the track of the hurrioane or the conflagration. Has not military management essentially failed in civilizing the Indians$ When an6 where did it turn their minds from war and the chase and fix them upon agriculture or pastoral life? When and where did it reduce the cost of Indian atthira8 It has only succeeded in illumi-nating our Indian history with bloody pictures, in surcharging the hearts of onr tribes $th hatred and revenge, and spending the money of the neoale by the fifty million dollars, oft reueated. - Tilis Gar onit:e m~ u : ~ g e n eIIO~'\V~ pt n, ,pisrrl. way look to the ~?XCth(a:t t~jllo\vst ~xterlui~latioRnS tht, gvrrlt desidrr~tumo f' tlie riervicc aud r h ~ i~nn;~cefi?n 111diant roul)les, but such pe,ier i3 f :~irn tila distoace it' ir i~ ?o depend upon exterminition by arms. If we fought five or six hun-dred warriors on the little pent-up peninsula of Florida seven years, with the re,dar army with many thousand voluateer soldiers, and the navv thrown in. at a cost of 1.500 lives on our aart. and fiftv nill lions of tlolll;~rs nnd 111u;e in treasure, ieariug at last sc;.crd hur~drt:d Se~~linoles ill tile c*t,cr~l:ulerw, ho till r1ni111to be free, bow 111ng\ \ill it n!q~ureu ud at what extieuse of treasure and blood to exb~minat<(n ot merelv snbiu-gute) our :!u~,000 Indians not\. oceupring arid r u a ~ n i hov~e r tl;r i , l i i~~r ; ;lnd ~n u u i~t uoif~ t~llcs il~tcriorn, nareu uf more tllau ?UO,OUO squnlri~iiles? Tr wonl~ls erm tlint the <:<)sit~ riceo f Indiaas slailr in the Fluridn \\.;lr. in the Sionx war, and in the la& Cheyenne war, has been on a fair averhge about a million of dollars each; and if our Indian troubles are to be ended by exterminating the race, it is evident, at the present rate of one Intlian killed per month, that the achievement will be completed at the end of exwtly 25,000 years; and if each dead Indian is to cost the same hereafter as heretofore, the precise sum total we will have to expend is ~.300!.000,.000..000 to colnnlete the extermination. But besides the cost to the trea.;ory, it is fi~uithl g. ttvtual comlwriaon, al,proxilnntiug ~lo&e l~- tI1c2 trclth, t l ~ ; t~hre rilnyil~go f (!very Intlinn coars 115 thelivesot'23 whites, s-o that the eexterminitick vrocess must bring., . about the slaughter of ,,.~.- OO,ulJOo f UIIY people. .~xi;rrru~in:itbiyo ~a~rm s is simply a11 :111.511rdit~., ilulrtis r e co~rldg t:t the 11111i:lns uutltr rhe ~~rotec!tioout 'rl~crl ng 111 ltirgt! tnassrs.&~~rroundb:~t~~~:dh r r t l~oesr :nit San~lCrerk. But a d ~ ~ ~ i tftuir ~ i ~ , the ariument, they deserv eextermination without mercy, and th& we might achieve the grand cons~mmationi,t seems to me that the glory of the result would bear no proportion to the fearful sum of the cost. 5. It is inhuman and unchristian, in my opinion, leaving the question of economy out of vim, to destroy a wlwle roce by suclh demorali#ation and disease as military government is sure to entail upon our tribes. I know no exception to the rule thatthe presence of military posts in the Indian country is speedily subversive of even the sternest ideas of Indian domestic morals. Female chastity, the abandonmcut of which in some tribes is punished with death, yields to bribery or fear j maritel |