The first point which has to be considered is, that the Indian is obnoxious to the very class of men with whom he is by the necessity of things most closely brought in contact. The railway has been the great persecutor of Red Men. It has driven away the game, it has carried in proximity to their reservations all the enterprise charged with whiskey, revolver, rifle, and greed, which can be furnished by the offscourings of the world. In the Far West the miners in advance throng into the valleys, and break the silence of the mountain-ranges by the sound of their picks, the cattle-raisers spread out over the plains, the ploughman settles down on the fertile land. "What," asks the American philanthropist, and his question is echoed all over the world by humane and good men, "what is to become of the Indian?" The hunting-grounds are gradually being pushed farther west and north until they are bounded by the sea, and by the eternal snow. And if by any chance it should be found that there is gold or lead, silver or iron, or copper, or coal in any abundance, even under these unpromising conditions it will be sought. The buffalo is disappearing fast, faster than the Indian himself. Deer are becoming scarcer every year. What is to be left for the Red Man? Pastoral life and agriculture, say the philanthropists. The substitution, however, is not so easy. The weakness of the United States Government is the main cause why the policy of reservations has failed. Let us take the account of it by a United States Minister. "The Government," says Mr. Schurz, "has tried to protect the Indians in good faith against encroachments, and has failed. It has yielded to the pressure exercised upon it by people in immediate contact with the Indians. When a collision between Indians and whites once occurred, no matter who was responsible for it, our military forces were always found on the side of the white against the savage. How was Government to proclaim that white men should for ever be excluded from the millions of acres covered by Indian reservations, and that the national power would be exerted to do so?" Such an idea the American Minister thinks would be utterly preposterous. The rough and ready frontier-man would pick quarrels with the Indians; the speculators would urge him on. Government could not prevent collisions; the conflict once brought on, Government, in spite of its good intentions and sense of justice, would find itself employing its forces to hunt down the Indian. The old story would be repeated, as it will be wherever, says Mr. Schurz, there is a large and valuable Indian Reservation surrounded by white settlements, "and unjust, disgraceful as it is, that is an inevitable result." Such being the case then, the United States Government being powerless to see that right shall be done, and it being at once a human and a Christian duty to avert, if possible, the extinction of the original possessors of this grand