TACTICS FOR THE MASHONAS.
[To THE EDITOR OF TIER " SPZCTATOR:9 SIR,—General —, one of our distinguished Indian fighters-, told the following story in the train as we were going to San Francisco, to illustrate the best method of treating the wild tribes. He said :— " When the Indians returned from the East after a visit to the- Great Father, they tried to impress upon the young braves the hopelessness of a contest with the whites, because of their numbers and their power. One of the young men at a powwow, when such a discourse intended to restrain them from taking up arms had been made, got up and said the whites put bad medicine into the heads of those sent to Washington, so that when they returned they told lies. ' Now if you will send me to see the Great Father they shall put no bad medicine in my head, and I will come back and tell you no lies.' So with the next deputation this young warrior was sent. When he started he took a stick and on it he made a notch for every white man he saw. Getting into the settlements he found his notched stick would not suffice to keep tally of the men, so he threw it away and kept another tally- stick and made a notch for every house. This did well for a time, but finally he threw it away also and kept tally only for villages and then for cities. The deputation of Indians was brought to Philadelphia, where, under the auspices of William Welsh, Esq. (a worthy successor to William Penn in his care of the Indians), a great meeting was held in the Opera House to arouse interest and sympathy for these wards of the nation, and the Indians were brought on the stage and seated facing the audience. Mr. Welsh—who, by the way, was the father of Herbert Welsh, Esq , who is an earnest advocate of Civil Service Reform and an Arbitra- tion Treaty—noticed the young Indian to be sitting with his head down and seeming very sad. So he sent an interpreter to him to learn what was the matter. The Indian had been appalled at the vision of four thousand pairs of eyes being directed upon him, and fully realised the overpowering numbers of the whites. He told the circumstances narrated above as to his having derided the idea of the superiority of the whites and his promise to come back to his tribe and tell no lies. And now,' he said, ' I must go back and be branded as a liar all my life !"
Probably a similar course taken with the chiefs of Mashona- land would save them and their people from continuing the hopeless contest with the British nation in which they are now engaged.—I am, Sir, &c., H. J. S.
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