installments of $50,000 each. The continued hostility of the Indians in question could have stopped a large part of the travel whose continuance they were thus induced to tolerate.

By this time the government had definitely committed itself to the building of a transcontinental railway, and in order to secure the good-will of the Shoshoni-Goship tribe to that undertaking a treaty was concluded1 with the tribe in question which said: "It being understood that provision has been made by the Government of the United States for the construction of a railway from the plains west to the Pacific Ocean, it is stipulated by said bands. that the said railway or its branches may be located, constructed, and operated, and without molestation from them, through any part of the country claimed or occupied by them." The Indians were paid $20,000 for their consent. Two years later, in 1865, the Osage nation of Kansas gave a right of way to railroads, as well as to "all roads and highways" through "the remaining lands of said Indians."

At about this date the Federal government added another feature to the policy by which it was seeking to secure additional travel and traffic facilities to the Pacific, and the innovation may well be indicated by quoting Article IV of the treaty signed by the Miniconjou Sioux, of Dakota, on October 10, 1865. It read:

"The said band, represented in council, shall withdraw from the routes overland already established through their country; and in consideration thereof the Government of the United States agree to pay the said band the sum of ten thousand dollars annually for twenty

1 October 12, 1863.

* Treaty of September 29.

years. . . ." This plan of inducing the natives to remove from the neighborhood of overland travel routes, and of paying them large sums for so doing, was put into extensive operation in the north, and was attended with advantages.1 The Comanche and Kiowa tribes signed another treaty in 18652 permitting the United States to build roads or highways in their countries and providing that the "injury sustained by reason thereof by the Indians" should be compensated.

3

When the United States, in 1866, approached the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations with desire to obtain the privilege of building railroads through their territories, those advanced and still independent commonwealths conceded the request, but laid down certain conditions far more extreme than had previously been named by any other tribe. The treaty, in its finished form, provided that their own legislatures, as well as the United States, might charter railways. It also stated that the two red nations might subscribe to the stock of such roads built by the whites, which stock so owned by them should have the force and effect of a first mortgage bond on all that part of the roads and their equipment in the nations' limits, and be a perpetual lien on the enterprises. In this unusual treaty the United States also again acknowledged the selfgovernment of the two native parties to it, for, in Article VII, it was declared that whatever legislation was enacted by the United States in relation to the Indian Territory, "shall not in any wise interfere with or annul their [the Choctaws' and Chickasaws'] present tribal organizations, or their respective legislatures or judiciaries, or the rights,

1 Other Sioux tribes paid for like action, with the sums they received: Lower Brule, $120,000; Two Kettle, $120,000; Blackfeet, $140,000; Upper Yanktonai, $200,000; Ogalalla, $200,000.

2 October 18.

Treaty of April 28.

laws, privileges, or customs of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations respectively."

Both the Delawares of Kansas and the Cherokees, in 1866,1 gave permission for the creation of railroads through their possessions, and in 18672 the long-disaffected Comanche and Kiowa signed a treaty whereby they agreed to withdraw all opposition to the construction of the overland railway then in progress along the Platte River and promised no longer to oppose any similar work which did not pass over their reservations. They also engaged not to attack travellers, wagon trains or stage-coaches. Similar or identical covenants were made by the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux within the period between October of 1867 and April of 1868, and from that time onward the iron rails of the white men crept over the plains and through the mountains with ever-increasing rapidity until finally they supplanted the wagon trains and stage-coaches of a former day. The white men had obtained their desire. The facilities and permissions granted by the Indians throughout the West had brought among them such an overwhelming horde of opponents that any further resistance to Caucasian dominion was futile.

A summary of the race relations in the West-in which much of truth is mingled with some error and contradiction-has been set down in the following words:

"It was a sad day to the tribes of the Missouri Valley, as to every other, when the white man came, but a far sadder day when the emigrant and settler came. Between these two epochs there was a long interval in which the paleface and his red brother lived in comparative harmony together. It was the era of the trader. Under the fur-trade régime the Indian might have continued his native mode of life indefi

1 By treaties dated July 4 and July 19.

* October 21.

Chittenden's "History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River."

nitely. The trader never sought to change it. He introduced but few innovations; had no desire to introduce any; and looked with as jealous an eye as the Indian himself upon the approach of civilization. . .

"All this was changed when the emigrant came. The traders were few in number and made no permanent settlements. The emigrants came by the thousand and spread themselves all over the country. They made roads, discovered rich mines, laid out cities, and declared their purpose to send the 'fire horse' across the plains, as they had sent the 'fire canoe' up the great river. Before this ever-increasing host the game wasted away. It was estimated that in the single year 1853 four hundred thousand buffalo were slain. As the buffalo was the very life of the plains tribes, its extermination meant inevitable starvation or hopeless dependence upon the government.

"All this the Indian foresaw with unerring vision, and it affected him just as it would any other independent people. A state of unrest ensued. Depredations and outrages occurred-for the Indian understood no other way of expressing his displeasure-and the government was forced to interfere. The era of the fur trade came to an end, and that of the treaty, the agent, and the annuity began-an era whose history will bring the blush of shame to its readers to the latest generations. And yet it would be wholly unjust to charge the flagrant wrongs which followed to this or that particular cause. History will exonerate the government from any but the purest motives in its dealings with the Indians. It may have been unwise in some of its measures; it was certainly weak in carrying its purposes into effect; but it always sought, with the light it possessed, the highest good of the Indian. The problem, unfortunately, was beyond human wisdom to solve. The ablest minds of this country and century have grappled with it in vain. It was the problem of how to commit a great wrong without doing any wrong -how to deprive the Indian of his birthright in such a way that he should feel that no injustice had been done him. It was the decree of destiny that the European should displace the native American upon his own soil. No earthly power could prevent it. This was the wrong; all else was purely incidental; and whatever consideration or generosity might attend the details of the change, nothing could alter the stern and fundamental fact.1

"With this impossible problem our law-givers wrestled for a century. in vain. They sought to deal with the Indian on a basis of political equality, where such equality did not and could not exist. The treaty system was the outgrowth of this attempt. Perhaps it was impossible to deal with the Indians except by treaty, but it is difficult at this day

1 [Chittenden.] "What consideration will induce you to give up war and remain at peace?" is the hypothetical question of a certain Indian agent to a tribe of the Sioux in 1867. And the hypothetical answer, based upon his many talks with them, was this: "Stop the white man from traveling across our lands; give us the country which is ours by right of conquest and inheritance, to live in and enjoy unmolested by his encroachments, and we will be at peace with all the world."