The Americans do not mince matters in their dealings with
the Red men. The Commissioner for Indian Affairs in his last report recommends that the remaining Indians, now about 300,000 in number, should be placed under a rigorous reformatory discipline, should be arrested whenever they wander away from their reserved lands, and that if " they stand up against the progress of civilisation and industry they must be relentlessly crushed. They must yield or perish, and there is something of providential mercy in the rapidity with which their fate advances upon them, leaving them scarcely the chance to resist before they shall be surrounded and disarmed." The Commissioner, however, is good enough to acknowledge that though Government has no tie to them, they " being expressly excluded from citizenship "—as also are minors and women—money ought to be spent in teaching them that in order to eat they must work, for "this continent was originally occupied and owned by the Indians, who therefore have a claim to privileges in the way of land somewhat larger than those of the newly arrived foreigner." The Indian has a claim to larger privileges than the foreigner, so he shall have them, " when he has been reduced to complete dependence and submission " in a prison with- out walls ; and if he breaks out of it, shall, " as original owner of the soil," be relentlessly crushed.
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